For Captain Gopichand Thotkura, the India’s first space tourist, and the second Indian to visit space after Rakesh Sharma, life hasn’t changed much.
Many other astronauts who claim that their lives have taken on a new meaning, who claim that the experience has changed them as humans. Captain Gopichand is an outlier in this regard. “I still wake up in the morning that I used to, I still go to sleep the same way,” he says.
But the one thing that has certainly changed. “My intent now has a purpose to it.” “The things that I do, from going to waking up in the morning to going to bed, everything now has a purpose.”
What does this purpose look like? Well for Captain Gopichand, it is all about investing in India’s space sector, and a sustainable planet.
India’s immense potential in space
“India has immense potential when it comes to space. We have some amazing aerospace startups, and of course, we have ISRO,” says Captain Gopichand. “Someone I was speaking to about the Chandrayaan-3 mission, asked me is India far behind when it comes to space tourism or colonising other planets. To such people I always say that India is actually far ahead, most people in the West are not just aware of it,” Captain Gopichand said.
“Look at what happens in the US. Even before NASA sends a mission up to space, the media covers it extensively. People only get to know about Chandrayaan-3’s successful mission, when the Western media presented it as breaking news,” added Captain Gopichand. “Everybody else gets a ton of media attention and media coverage. For us, we get the results, get the job done, and then we get media attention,” he said.
“We have some of the most brilliant minds from India, in some of the most lucrative and possibly the highest offices, controlling things, said Capt. Gopichand “Imagine how many more of such minds are there in 1.4 billion people, how many of such creative and genius minds can you find in there,” he continued.
“We have people who are passionate and who really have the intent to do something great in aerospace, in payload, in satellites and other things that one can’t even imagine — like integrating AI in space travel. When we deliver, people sit and take notice, wondering what just happened and how we manage to do it. Just look at what happened in Pokhran, just a few decades ago,” he said.
“All we need is a little push in funding namely from financial institutions, from private firms, from government agencies. We have it in us to change the world, and we will,” he said
On contributing to Indian space startups
For many, a trip to space would certainly be the highlight moment of one’s life. For Captain Gopichand, however, he’s just getting started.
When asked what he plans to do next, and what his next adventures, were, Captain Gopichand responded “I want to contribute to the aerospace startups in India in any capacity to try to bridge the gap between the aerospace industry entrepreneurs who can think outside the box with those individuals who can make it a reality for them — corporations, governments, whatever that takes,” he said.
“We have to push them towards what they dream and tell them that it can be done,” he added. “The larger vision is to bring about a sustainable way of living for our planet in what we do, that needs to be really put across. Because if they can understand that we are limited in where we live, then automatically we get to where we want to be, which is colonising other planets,” said Capt Gopichand.
On being an eco-warrior
During his flight, one very interesting thing that the Andhra Pradesh-born 30-year-old pilot did was hold a banner that read, “I am an eco-warrior for our sustainable planet."
When asked, what it that was about, Captain Gopichand responded, “It was about my organisation, Preserve Life Corp, an Atlanta-based health and wellness company. We are building the world’s first corpus wellness community in Georgia.”
“The idea it is to bring together 100 corporations from across 20 nations with their decision makers to do a wellness program with us, a preventive medical program, a 1200-acre campus, which is heavily focused on sustainability. That way, it becomes easier for them to realise why do we need to preserve the planet,” he said.
