‘Everyone is looking at Elon Musk’: ISRO chief S Somanath ‘inspired’ by work of SpaceX CEO, says ‘trying to beat him…’

ISRO chief S Somanath showered praise on billionaire businessman Elon Musk for his ‘inspiring’ contributions during an address on Saturday. The aerospace engineer also

“Elon Musk is making heads turn with the type of rockets that he has captured with the chopsticks recently and people are asking when ISRO is going to do this,” the ISRO chief said.

SpaceX had successfully "caught" the first-stage booster of its Starship mega-rocket earlier this month as it returned to the launch pad after a test flight — a world first amid the company's quest for rapid reusability. The "super heavy booster" had blasted off attached to the Starship rocket minutes earlier, then made a picture-perfect controlled return to the same pad in Texas, where a pair of huge mechanical "chopsticks" reached out from the launch tower to bring the slowly descending booster to a halt.

"Everyone is looking at Elon Musk, what he is doing there and how we can come up with some fantastic idea that we can beat him. Of course, everybody wants to beat him, but he is above all of that. I think he is such a great man doing fantastic work. We are all inspired by this work,” the ISRO chief added.

Somanath noted that the aerospace industry was undergoing a transformation in recent years with technology becoming accessible to people and constant growth in the ‘application domain’. Consequently there is also a growing impact on “the economy, employability, and job creation”.

“These domains are very important and that's why the government has recently taken the initiative to open up the space sector, bringing in more private investment and private participation. It's a domain that cannot be kept controlled and regulated. Of course, there is some knowledge that needs to be controlled and regulated, but the application domains, doing work, creating value in this have to get out of those vaults that have been covering the space systems,” he told IIT Delhi.

(With inputs from agencies)