When Chick­en Lick­en was struck by a falling acorn, great pan­ic and mass hys­te­ria en­sued, since many be­lieved the sky was falling. Five days ago, cit­i­zens of the Turks and Caicos wit­nessed “the sky falling” when Elon Musk’s SpaceX Star­ship ex­plod­ed, caus­ing bright streaks of light from plum­met­ing de­bris which forced air­lines to di­vert flights. The FAA is in­ves­ti­gat­ing prop­er­ty dam­age. Per­sons de­scribed an in­tense rum­bling and tremors when de­bris struck the Earth.

On March 8, 2024, a Florid­i­an fam­i­ly sued NASA af­ter de­bris from a Space Sta­tion fell through their roof. In late April 2023, a SpaceX Star­ship ex­plod­ed over South Texas, caus­ing de­bris to rain down on Port Is­abel, dam­ag­ing prop­er­ty. Space de­bris al­so fell in the Snowy Moun­tains, NSW, Aus­tralia, some­time in 2022.

With the rapid­ly in­creas­ing num­ber of com­mer­cial space launch­es (145 launch­es reach­ing or­bit last year from the US com­pared with 21 five years ago), more ac­ci­dents are in­evitable. We need to en­sure T&T is a sig­na­to­ry of the Con­ven­tion on In­ter­na­tion­al Li­a­bil­i­ty for Dam­age Caused by Space Ob­jects.

Musk’s Star­ship rock­et was meant to com­pete with NASA’s Space Launch, at a low­er cost and with faster mis­sion turn­arounds. SpaceX al­so has plans for a hu­man Mars ex­plo­ration.

Be­ing a sci-fi en­thu­si­ast, who grew up read­ing the likes of Edgar Rice Bur­roughs, Isaac Asi­mov, Robert A Hein­lein, Ur­su­la Le-Guin, and Phillip K Dick, Musk’s ven­tures fas­ci­nate me.

How­ev­er, a con­flict of in­ter­est could arise if Musk can in­flu­ence re­sources shift­ing to­ward his ven­tures, rather than NASA’s pro­grammes. NASA, like most pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions, has in­curred mas­sive ex­pen­di­ture at a time when the av­er­age Amer­i­can is fac­ing an in­creas­ing cost of liv­ing.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump promised to cut gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture and wastage with his De­part­ment of Gov­ern­ment Ef­fi­cien­cy (DOGE). Musk and Vivek Ra­maswamy were put to head this ven­ture, but this en­tan­gle­ment was short-lived. Ashoka Grover wrote in the Hin­dus­tani Times that many be­lieved that Musk was re­spon­si­ble for ‘kick­ing Ra­maswamy to the curb’, while oth­ers cite Ra­maswamy’s gu­ber­na­to­r­i­al Ohio bid.

If Musk has the pow­er to rec­om­mend bud­get cuts, in­clud­ing to the FA, a sce­nario could be cre­at­ed where he could starve this agency that has to in­ves­ti­gate his own com­pa­ny’s mishaps of funds.

Jeff Be­zos’ Blue Ori­gin com­pa­ny put the New Glen in­to or­bit nine days ago. Space, it seems, is the new mer­can­tile play­ground of bil­lion­aires.

Sev­en days ago, In­dia be­came the world’s fourth na­tion to achieve space dock­ing, a feat on­ly ac­com­plished by the US, Rus­sia, and Chi­na. A year and a half ago, they land­ed Chan­drayaan-3 on the moon.

In­dia’s space agency, IS­RO, plans a mis­sion to Venus, in­tend­ing to ex­pand its share of a rapid­ly grow­ing $400-bil­lion glob­al space mar­ket. In­dia, now the world’s fifth-largest econ­o­my, can fur­ther its eco­nom­ic growth. In De­cem­ber 2024, IS­RO and the Eu­ro­pean Space Agency (ESA) signed a col­lab­o­ra­tive space ex­plo­ration agree­ment.

Even though In­di­an com­pa­nies have joined an In­dia-US space and de­fence col­lab­o­ra­tion pro­gramme and have done busi­ness with Space X, AK Bhatt, di­rec­tor gen­er­al of the In­di­an Space As­so­ci­a­tion, told Reuters that In­dia is choos­ing its space bat­tles care­ful­ly. It does not aim to take on Musk in a head-on fight over heavy launch rock­ets, but is fo­cus­ing on small­er satel­lites and launch ve­hi­cles, and on crunch­ing space da­ta—where it can es­tab­lish it­self as a re­li­able al­ter­na­tive to Chi­na and a part­ner to coun­tries in the Glob­al South.

Three days ago, In­dia’s PM Naren­dra Mo­di al­so com­mis­sioned a ma­jor de­stroy­er, a frigate, and a sub­ma­rine, built at the Mazagon Docks. He re­called In­dia’s mar­itime her­itage go­ing back to the Chola dy­nasty (3-12 CE) and that of Chha­tra­p­ati Shiv­a­ji Ma­haraj, who re­sist­ed the colo­nial pow­ers at sea. In­dia al­so has in­ten­tions of emerg­ing as a ma­jor mar­itime pow­er.

Re­searcher David Cling­ing­smith wrote that In­dia ex­pe­ri­enced dein­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion and ces­sa­tion of var­i­ous craft in­dus­tries un­der British rule, re­sult­ing in In­dia’s share of the world econ­o­my de­clin­ing from 24.4 per cent in 1700 to 4.2 per cent in 1950, and its share of glob­al in­dus­tri­al out­put de­clin­ing from 25 per cent in 1750 to 2 per cent in 1900. Prof­its to the colonists were all that mat­tered.

In for­mer US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s farewell ad­dress, he said, “To­day, an oli­garchy is tak­ing shape in Amer­i­ca of ex­treme wealth, pow­er and in­flu­ence that threat­ens our en­tire democ­ra­cy, our ba­sic rights and free­doms, and a fair shot for every­one to get ahead.”

We now have to be wary of those pow­er­ful oli­garchs with the glob­al reach to be­come our new colo­nial mas­ters.

In­dia should take note.