Pune: "There is a huge market in space, wherein space can be exploited, habituated, explored for tourism and a lot more. All we need is to explore it," said the chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation, Kiran Rao, who received the 22nd HK Firodia Award in Science and Technology here at a function.
He said, "With industries and academic arena working together, we have targeted towards making indigenous scram jet engines and are trying to bring down the cost. A team of interdisciplinary innovators and researchers are working on it."
"Way back in 1961 when Vikram Sarabhai requested a church priest to convince the fishermen to allow him to do research on the coast, it led to India building its indigenous Navik Satellite, which today guides thousands of fisherman about the fishing points and various weather vagaries," he added.
Secretary of Department of Science and Technology Ashutosh Sharma, who was also the recipient of the award said, "By 2020, we are committed to being 5G. Talking about disruptive innovations: the rise of intelligent machines, wherein the machines will communicate with machines, this has become possible, as countries like Japan have less number of people. But though technology is global, we need to think of India-centric technology, as we have people. We need to have deep thinking about it."
Rajiv Kumar, Vice-President, NIDHI Aayog, said, "I have three questions in mind 1) Why Research and Development spending in our country remains low? We spend only 0.84 per cent as compared to other countries that spend over 4 per cent of GDP. 2) Why we have small islands like ISRO. We need to have more and huge such islands to make the country a global leader? 3) And the mutual trust between us is lacking. We need to be working as team India if we want to be a global leader."
Chairman of Kinetic group Arun Firodia and his wife pediatrician Jayshree Firodia, scientist Govind Swarup, RA Mashelkar were also present on the occasion besides a host of other dignitaries. The function was held at College of Engineering, Pune.
