The late Kalpana Chawla was the first Indian-American astronaut to be part of a space shuttle mission, and she was followed by Sunita Williams -- both of whom are icons in India and among the Indian-American community here. Do you foresee more Indians Americans following in their footsteps? And what next do you have in mind for Sunita?
I am not in charge of Sunita's new assignments, so I have no idea. She is highly regarded. As you know, she is an officer in the US Navy as well as an astronaut. She's very well thought of. So, I am sure her future is good. As to whether other Indian American technical professionals will apply to and be accepted in the astronaut corps, I hope so.
One of those who almost made it -- but not quite -- is a good friend of mine and was a former student of mine. I won't, for privacy reasons, give his name, but I was crossing my fingers that he would get accepted because he was a PhD student of mine. He had applied to be an astronaut after Sunita. I hope some of the Indian-American technical community will decide that they want to be astronauts and will come join.
So there's definitely a pool of qualified technical personnel for future astronauts among this Indian American community at NASA...
Again, depending on the skill mix that we want, yes.
If the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal is not consummated, are you concerned that it could adversely impact on Indo-US space cooperation, in that US industry and business may be turned off to the extent that promoting Indo-US space commercialisation may come to a grinding halt?
I don't know. I can't as NASA administrator speak to anything other than space. And what is even worse is I don't know anything about the nuclear situation or cooperation. So, I just can't comment. I hope that Indo-US space cooperation will not be impacted by the progress of the nuclear agreement -- whether or not that goes well.
There is a way we have to look at this: We can always find reasons to disagree if we want to. There are valid reasons to agree based on the values that each country holds dear, and there are valid reasons to disagree. We can always find reasons to agree in other areas. So, I suggest that as a starting point, we look for areas where we can agree and pursue those, and then let some of the disagreements follow in their own time. Sometimes, when you find areas where you can agree, you find that the areas where you thought you disagreed on aren't so bad.
We will never have a perfect alignment of values between our two societies. We shouldn't even look for that. In my opinion, we should look for areas where we have common mutual interests and where our values are aligned, and make success stories out of these.
Image: Astronauts Kalpana Chawla (seated) with fellow mission specialist Laurel B Clark at a training session before the Columbia mission.
Photograph: JSC/NASA
Also read: A Journey to Remember
Advertisement
