OrionHunter
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- May 28, 2011
- Messages
- 13,818
- Reaction score
- -5
- Country
- Location
Superstition among space scientists and astronauts is rampant. Observances of "lucky" rituals are so common among spacecraft engineers, scientists, and astronauts seems to be a wonderful expression of humans' essentially irrational nature!
While in NASA, scientists popped lucky peanuts while tracking crucial moments in the journey of their Mars probe, Curiosity, the Russians have fine-tuned an elaborate system of ceremonies for every launch. Before a launch, the mission's project director rubs the space vehicle with a lucky coin. Cosmonauts plant a tree in the cosmonaut gallery at Baikonur. Midway towards the launch, they get off the bus that is taking them and urinate on the tyre!!
At Byalalu, near Bangalore the smart data collection, retrieval and processing centre has a series of safety mechanisms and back up systems to keep data safe. Every machine in this room is daubed with a tilak of kumkum and turmeric. It's harmless. And the great outside is so unexplored, it doesn't do any damage to propitiate the gods, does it?
It seems to me the Indian Mars Orbiter Mission, Mangalyaan can't possibly leave its clean room without somebody performing a puja ceremony and daubing a tilak somewhere, to give it an auspicious start to its journey! I wonder what space-safe compound one uses to plant a tilak on a spacecraft?
Oh well, tilak, kumkum or pissing on tyres to appropriate the Gods is par for the course, as long as it's a successful mission!!
Now, what do you do when you get a new car? My wife forces me to do the usual puja ritual, ending with the squashing of 'nimbus' placed under my tyres! Jeeez!
While in NASA, scientists popped lucky peanuts while tracking crucial moments in the journey of their Mars probe, Curiosity, the Russians have fine-tuned an elaborate system of ceremonies for every launch. Before a launch, the mission's project director rubs the space vehicle with a lucky coin. Cosmonauts plant a tree in the cosmonaut gallery at Baikonur. Midway towards the launch, they get off the bus that is taking them and urinate on the tyre!!
At Byalalu, near Bangalore the smart data collection, retrieval and processing centre has a series of safety mechanisms and back up systems to keep data safe. Every machine in this room is daubed with a tilak of kumkum and turmeric. It's harmless. And the great outside is so unexplored, it doesn't do any damage to propitiate the gods, does it?
It seems to me the Indian Mars Orbiter Mission, Mangalyaan can't possibly leave its clean room without somebody performing a puja ceremony and daubing a tilak somewhere, to give it an auspicious start to its journey! I wonder what space-safe compound one uses to plant a tilak on a spacecraft?
Oh well, tilak, kumkum or pissing on tyres to appropriate the Gods is par for the course, as long as it's a successful mission!!
Now, what do you do when you get a new car? My wife forces me to do the usual puja ritual, ending with the squashing of 'nimbus' placed under my tyres! Jeeez!
