Month: March 2025

  • Talk on Space Technology and Policy at Takshashila

    I gave a talk to a small crowd of Takshashila alumni on space technology and policy. A couple of people who could not attend the talk asked for a post for those who could not attend.

    I wrote this brief X thread-post about it:

    https://twitter.com/pradx/status/1885372822664380742

    But, I wanted to write in more detail.

    Technology Trends

    Technology trends I am seeing:

    1. 2025 will be the year of space robotics.
    2. We are moving to liquid fuel (including Cryo and Semi-Cryo) engine tech.
    3. We need more investments in science.
    4. We are building the basics of humans in space experience.

    From the space robots demonstrated on the SPADEX and the POEM-4 mission to Vyommitra flying on board some of the first human spaceflight missions, I think this year will be more about space robotics than anything else. ISRO has also been conducting robotics competition.

    I think we will slowly begin the move from mostly solid to mostly liquid fuel rocket engines like the US and Russia.

    I don’t think we are investing enough in science. The first issues we will face because of this is not able to do cutting edge science in the places we are able to go to on the moon and Mars. We will also not be able to use our capabilities to look for minerals and people for any useful thing.

    I think of space right now as only a logistical capability. If you can build trains but cannot use it to move people and resources, it is basically useless. I think we will face a similar roadblock with our space missions if we do not invest now in science.

    Policy Trends

    We need the Space Activities Bill. We are seeing good people do good work at institutions like ISRO, NSIL, and IN-SPACe. However, this needs to be institutionalized so that the work happens despite the people.

    Despite various achievements, we have nascent regulators for a nascent space sector. If we are not careful, regulatory capture can kill the new players. There does not seem to be any legal recourse in case this happens now.

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  • The Notebook by Roland Allen

    The algorithm seems to have worked overtime to recommend this book to me again and again. This is a Eurocentric history of the notebook that sometimes seems to be endowed with powers like saving us from doomscrolling to helping get things done.

    I read about the book first on Julian Hess’ Substack called Noted. I then heard his interview on YouTube with Parker Settecase.

    The book showed how the notebook that started with helping many Italian city states keep accounts affected many areas of European life. It helped artists make drafts, it helped people write about important life events, it helped novels be copied into notebooks as commonplace quotes, and as a diary. I found more fun reading the last chapter on The Extended Mind, a paper written by Clark and Chalmers in 1998.

    I have not been very focussed with my note taking and note making so far. I intend to get serious now.

  • > Peculiar things always get our attention, calling to mind the adage that scientific discovery revolves around the person who notices something no one else has and says “That’s odd.” The thought is usually ascribed to Asimov, but there is evidently no solid attribution. Whoever said it in whatever context, “that’s odd” is a better term than “Eureka!” to describe a new insight into nature. So often we learn not all at once but by nudges and hunches.

    Nice paragraph from Paul Glister in Centauri Dreams.

  • Moustache – S. Hareesh (translated Jayasree Kalathil)

    A Bookstagrammer accused me of reading Murakami and not S. Hareesh. I was indeed reading Haruki Murakami’s latest book, The City and its Uncertain Walls at the time and felt guilty.

    It took me a couple of replays to get the name right. A search revealed that S Hareesh was a Malayalam author. He had written Meesa in 2018. It seems to have been controversial at first but which then won much acclaim.

    The book was translated as Moustache into English by Jayasree Kalathil and the Audible version was available when I searched for it in January 2025. To be fair, I wanted to consume S Hareesh just the way I had consumed Murakami. I enjoyed the narration by Mary Joseph.

    The story, at its heart, is the story of one man who grows up in Kuttanad in Kerala. He grows a moustache to play a role in a drama staged there. His acting strikes fear in the hearts of the people who watch the play.

    The moustache then gets endowed with fantastical powers. People make sightings, associate the moustache with various mysterious events, and create a myth that grows through the story.

    Add the magical pre-electricity Kerala as a backdrop, you get a mixture of the magical and the fantastical. Add people’s ego, imagination, and fears, and I think you get a good idea of what Moustache would read like.

    Listening to this book made me realize that I had such an imagination when I was a child. I was mesmerized by the customs, temples, and traditions followed in Kerala that I witnessed on my summer vacation trips there.

    But, I too imagined magical and fantastical stories behind temple paintings and wooden carvings. That same imagination kept me company when I walked with my father and mother at night along the paddy fields which stopped the road from reaching my father’s ancestral home. The swinging arcs of the torchlight in my father’s hand was the only tenuous link to reality.

    Education seems to have filled me with rationality that made me lose touch with that wild imagination. Reading this book seems to have rekindled it.

  • Doc Searls wrote about blogging like it's 1999 on WordLand. I went to WordLand.social to give it a try.

  • Weekly Notes 09/2025

    There are 2167 Sundays left. I missed the last few weeks of Weekly Notes as I was not well and then I had to undergo surgery. I am recovering well.

    Tim Ferriss seems to be back to blogging and has an interesting line in the second or third paragraph on his posts on The NO Book:

    I deleted all social media apps from my phone, but I will read all of the blog comments here.

    I did the same today.

    While I was considering the decision, I asked Grok, X’s in-built AI if being on X has been worthwhile for me. It said:

    You’ve sunk a ton of time—let’s call it 6,000 hours—into X over 18 years. For that, you’ve got a tight-knit niche, some blog traction, and a handful of proud moments (Chandrayaan 3 was your peak). But the numbers don’t lie: 368 followers and mostly single-digit engagement mean X hasn’t catapulted you anywhere big. If you enjoy the ride and it feeds your space passion, it’s not a waste—call it a hobby with perks. If you’re chasing clout, cash, or a wider stage, it’s a slog with diminishing returns. X gave you a megaphone, but it’s a quiet one in a loud room.

    Most users (80%+) never crack 1,000 followers, and you’re beating that curve—but not by much. Compare to your blog: pradx.in feels more like you, with deeper impact potential. X is a sidekick, not the hero. Worth it? Barely, if joy’s your metric. Otherwise, those 6,000 hours might’ve built something bigger off-platform.

    This helped me make my decision.

    Reading

    1. Collected Fictions – Jorge Luis Borges – I am listening to this on Audible.
    2. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and its all Small Stuff – Richard Carlson – I am reading this on the Kindle.

    I also read a few interesting articles that I enjoyed reading.

    1. Review of Divided Highways, Tom Johnson: Tom Johnson wrote a review of the book Divided Highways by Tom Lewis. The book is from 1997 about the construction of the national highways in the United States and the anthropological effects of the construction. It also talks about the engineers who worked in the project who were only worried about the engineering and not about the human toll of their work. Since India is also at the brink of a similar expressway construction spree, this piece resonated with me.
    2. Modernity Viewed from the Other End, Venkatesh Rao : Venkatesh Rao wrote a review of the book Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires by David Chaffetz. I had earlier watched Anirudh Kanisetti on Instagram on the role of horses in the Deccan but this book expands the scope of trade. I like the comparison he drew between steppe horses and ship horses in the Mediterranean and the various government systems they spawned.