Hasta La Ideas

Koppillil Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space and Research Organization, holding a model of the Mars orbiter. Altaf Qadri/AP

By Martyn Perks

As contrary as it sounds, in 2014 designers should be more ambitious and less worried about being socially responsible. That way, we will all get to benefit more from their efforts.

Take the reaction to how India launched its probe to Mars in November. No sooner had the Mangalyaan taken off than critics slammed the project for being a huge waste of money, given that much of the Indian population live in abject poverty.

But to criticise the Indian space program is wrong for two reasons. First, it will help bring about many technological benefits that will help improve the lives of millions including the poor. Thanks to India’s ongoing investment in space and weather satellite technology, many thousands of lives were recently saved from a coastal cyclone in October due to early warnings.

The second reason is that, as Samanth Subramanian, the India correspondent for The National, writes in The New Yorker, the project will give many people in India an all-important “spurt of optimism and confidence that can urge people, even for a brief moment, to lift their eyes upward and aim a little higher.”

Such cause for optimism is sorely lacking here in the West, perhaps made worse as China, like India, is beginning to excel in space. China’s Jade Rabbit rover is the first to land on the moon in over 40 years.

There will be much to learn from India and China’s space programmes. The scientific and technological breakthroughs will help bring about many innovations, just as the Kennedy space programme did in the 1960s and 1970s.

All of this should be cause for designers to celebrate. But not so, according to what is now majority opinion in the design community, which holds that design needs to exhibit more humility and less environmental hubris.

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