How Indians Became So Space-Crazy
From sages who travel across realms to NASA scientists, the subcontinent is no stranger to the call of the cosmos.
Ajay Kothari remembers sitting around a fire in northern Gujarat with his family in 1965. They were listening to the news on their Philips radio: the U.S. had launched Gemini 3 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, part of its second human spaceflight program. Though he was on a farm in the middle of a jungle 8,000 miles away, the event changed Kothari’s life. “We were completely taken over by what America could achieve,” Kothari told The Juggernaut.
Five years later, Kothari would move to the U.S. to become a rocket scientist. From naming their children after Neil Armstrong to family holidays at the Kennedy Space Center to the box office success of space films like Interstellar and Gravity in India, space fascinates Indians. In fact, 24% of the country aspires to careers in space — more than double the interest in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and South Korea. This obsession, however, has little to do with catching up on time lost during the Space Race.