Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scripted history today by successfully launching a record 104 satellites, including India’s earth [sic] observation satellite, on a single rocket from the spaceport in Sriharikota. This is the highest number of satellites ever launched in a single mission.

The previous record was held by Russia, with 37 satellites launched at one go. The 104 satellites include 3 of India’s own and 101 of ISRO’s international customers, including 96 from USA. (The article states ISRO’s previous record as 23 satellites launched together in June 2015, but I can’t find a record for that. The closest I could find was this: 20 satellites launched in June 2016.)

As much as this is making news, and as much as ISRO should be proud, this should come as no surprise for space enthusiasts— ISRO has been quite a force in space technology, especially using its PSLV launch system, for quite some time now.

The four stage Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), used for this launch, was developed by ISRO in the 1990s to launch satellites into Sun-synchronous orbits for its own remote sensing satellites. (Other than ISRO, only Russia commercially launches satellites into Sun-synchronous orbits.) PSLV was also used by ISRO for Chandrayaan 1, its lunar probe, and Mangalyaan, its Mars orbiter, becoming only the fourth space agency to reach Mars orbit.

As an aside, the Sun-synchronous orbit is a very interesting concept: it is an orbit where the satellite passes over any given point on Earth’s surface at the same local solar time. This allows the satellite to be in constant sunlight as it passes over particular regions— which is great for imaging, remote sensing, spying and weather applications. The technicalities of such an orbit are very involved and very interesting: look up the Wikipedia page I’ve linked to above.

Fun fact: due to the mechanics of the orbit, a sun-synchronous orbit is stable without external thrust only on oblate spheroid planets. This means that such orbits work on Earth and will work on Mars, but on almost spherical planets such as Venus, it will require external thrust to maintain its orbit.

∞

An Indian comedian, known for “edgy”, “controversial” material, apparently created something that pokes fun at Indian mega-stars and national heroes Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar.

And of course, this being India, some people found reason to be outraged. And of course, since these people have political affiliations linked to the government, the police are now “looking into the matter”.

Mumbai police has begun an inquiry into complaint against comedian Tanmay Bhat’s video of a mock conversation with Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar that prompted the Shiv Sena, Bhratiya [sic] Janata Party and MNS to call for action against Bhat and AIB.

The inquiry is based on the complaint by Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.

Bollywood has also reacted sharply to the comedian’s portrayal of the music and cricket icons, saying it is in poor taste.

Making videos in poor taste is not against the law, people. I have not seen the video; I will go ahead and concede nevertheless that the video is not worth its time on Youtube. OK, then don’t watch it! If no one watches it, guess what happens: they stop making such videos!

I find stuff like this maddening. “Freedom of speech” should be simple to understand, no? I can speak my mind; you can speak yours. Unless you’re putting words in my mouth, or are preventing me from living my life fully, I have no right to stop you making your speech, however offended or outraged I feel. Yes, if I feel your speech is “wrong” or “bad”, I might encourage my friends and family to boycott you. But only my sense of offense should have no effect on the legality of your speech!

The only people with say in the matter are the celebrities in question. Did Sachin Tendulkar complain? No. Did Lata? No! As long as everyone understands that the video was made by someone else and not the celebrities in question, how in the world does legality come into the picture?

Please, let the police do their thing and go after actual crime and actual criminals. “Distasteful” and “offensive” mean very different things than “illegal”.

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It’s always gutting to see your team lose, isn’t it. Gutting, and infuriating. “They should have won! If only they’d played better!”

Let’s think back though, to the beginning of the World Cup, before a ball had been bowled. Remember those days, just after the triseries with Australia and England? What if someone had said then that India would reach the semifinal? We’d have smirked. “With this team? This bowling attack?” Winning 7 games on the trot? Smirk. 70 wickets in 7 games? Best economy rate as a bowling unit? Cohesive batting performance from the entire unit? Fast bowlers bowling with pace and discipline? Smirk; smirk; smirk.

India have done well to reach the semifinals. They’ve been an excellent team. Their flaw today was that they were not a great team. But that’s okay, being excellent isn’t half bad.

Yes, they had a collective off-day. The bowlers sprayed it around a bit, uncharacteristically. The batters got out in inopportune moments, uncharacteristically. Dhawan usually scores big once he gets a start (and gets a catch dropped). Kohli usually gets himself in and ups his scoring rate, and doesn’t get out at all. There’s usually always Rahane, and even Raina has scored a hundred this world cup. Usually; just not today.

They came across a genuinely better team today, and lost. No shame in that; that takes nothing away from their excellence. Then too, they actually brought Australia back from what looked to be a certain 360+ score. That’s something in itself, no?

Also, a thought: how many teams have defended their world cup titles successfully? West Indies in the 1970s, and Australia in the 1990s and 2000s. It needs a great team, not merely an excellent one, to be able to defend trophies across four year periods and in different conditions. Would we call this Indian team “great”, comparable to the West Indian and Australian teams of before? Definitely not, right? Not yet. Maybe with time and more experience, and maybe a couple of different players, but certainly not yet.

So they came across a better team. They lost. So what? They played well until they lost; they played with pride and with skill and with passion and with excellence.

They kept the Tricolor flying high. Let’s be proud of that.

An old building in Secunderabad collapsed today. The building was used as a hotel, which means that quite a lot of people were inside when it happened. Although some of those people have been rescued, 11 people have already been declared dead, and many more are still trapped inside.

Some points from the report–

• The hotel was planning to build an oven on the first floor (this is India, which means they’re talking about the ‘second floor’ in American parlance). The building may have collapsed under the weight of bricks being transported for this; the building lacked concrete pillars to support the weight.
• The building had structural weaknesses, but the hotel was not issued safety notices (recently, along with many other buildings) because “the building looked fine from outside”.
• “In future, all buildings over 60 years old will be given orders for renovation,” says the city planning commissioner.

This is appalling, on a number of counts.

• Did the hotel seek permission from the city planning commissioner’s office before undertaking their oven-building project? If not, this is gross negligence on the part of the hotel authorities. They are presumably not experts in structural engineering, and should not be in a position to judge the capabilities of a structure.

• ‘Looked fine from the outside’ is not a structural health monitoring technique. However much the city planning commission tries to blame anyone else, they were grossly negligent too. Laziness in health monitoring of public structures causes lives, and they should know and acknowledge that.

  Health monitoring norms and procedures are in place for a reason, and even the most exhaustive and advanced health monitoring techniques don’t work if ‘looked fine from the outside’ is treated as an adequate criterion.

• How about, instead of treating every building older than 60 years as needing renovation, the city planning commission does its job of inspecting buildings thoroughly? The problem isn’t that they can’t identify structural flaws—they’ve recently issued notices to 57 other buildings recently. It’s just that this building fell through the cracks, because ‘it looked fine from the outside’.

  The problem with the diktat about 60 year old buildings is that it increases the overall cost of maintaining buildings, and decreases the efficiency of health checks. Even well designed buildings, which are for all intents in great shape, will be forced to undergo renovations, or at least exhaustive checks, when they clearly don’t need them. On the one hand this increases the overall cost of inspection and renovation, because you’re spending resources where they’re not needed. On the other it increases the risk of ‘it looks good from the outside’ assessments. This is because the more the number of buildings tested that turn out to be perfectly healthy, the more the officers are prone to become lax and take shortcuts in making assessments.

  Instead, why not improve the work ethic of the inspection officials? Why not make them actually follow the health monitoring guidelines, and make sure that buildings that actually need detailed renovations are the only ones that get notices?

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Can you tell that the line about ‘it looked fine from the outside’ has irked me? It has. Structural health monitoring is extremely important for public safety, and such negligence should have no place here. Compare this with a recent tragic story of a building inspector in Philadelphia, USA, who apparently committed suicide because a building collapsed under his watch–even though he had nothing to do with it:

A city building inspector who examined a demolition project just weeks before a building collapsed at the site and killed six people has been found dead in an apparent suicide […]

“This man did nothing wrong,” Mr. Gillison [deputy mayor for public safety and chief of staff] added. “The department did what it was supposed to do under the code at the time.” Officials have said they will make any necessary changes to the city’s building code to prevent such incidents in the future.

Some accidents, like the one in Philadelphia, are unavoidable, and it is indeed tragic when the building inspectors blame themselves. The whole point of health and safety standards, and inspection codes and permissions, is to avoid accidents where possible, and the whole system stands on inspectors and officials with acute eyes and sharp skills.

The collapse in Secunderabad is sad and tragic, but the most important question is and should be—was it avoidable? Apparently it was. Does Secunderabad need a change in safety standards? Only the planning commissioner’s office can determine that—although they’d do well to remove ‘it looked fine from the outside’ from their manuals.