Latest news with #AirForceGroup
Indian Express
a day ago
- Science
- Indian Express
Before astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla's space mission, excitement anxiety & a little prayer
For the last few days, the sprawling white single-storeyed Anshu Niwas in one corner of Lucknow's Triveni Nagar has been seeing a steady stream of friends, relatives, well-wishers and the media. They are all there for one reason – to offer their good wishes to the owners of the house, the Shuklas, for their 39-year-old Air Force Group Captain Shubhanshu 'Gunjan' Shukla's maiden flight to space. On June 10 – over 10 months after the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) first announced his name as one of four astronauts as part of Axiom Space's fourth commercial mission to the International Space Station – Shubhanshu will take off on a two-week Indo-US mission. Commandeered by veteran US astronaut Peggy Whitson, the Axiom Mission-4 (Ax-4) mission will take off onboard SpaceX's Falcon-9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, making Shubhanshu only the second Indian to travel to space after Rakesh Sharma's iconic spaceflight onboard Russia's Soyuz spacecraft in 1984. Shubhanshu is currently undergoing mandatory quarantine at the Kennedy Space Centre, and his family back at home is both excited and anxious about the mission, his parents Shambhu Dayal Shukla, a 73-year-old former civil servant, and Asha Shukla, 67, tell The Indian Express. 'We had been hearing about his space journey for a long time, and naturally, there were many questions that came to our minds. But there was no one we could turn to and ask what really happened up there and what he would be doing,' she says. That anxiety was allayed after a dinner and a conversation with Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe, who happened to be in Lucknow, on May 9. Over the dinner that lasted 3-4 hours, Stibbe, who was part of the historic Axiom-1 (Ax-1) mission to the ISS in 2022, told them in great detail about his own space mission and encouraged the couple to ask him questions. 'He brought along a presentation he made for us,' Shubhanshu's 40-year-old sister Suchi says. 'Over dinner, he told in great detail how they lived, ate, and slept in space. He didn't speak about the challenges he faced. Instead, he told us about the beauty of the journey. His face shone with the happiness of having seen, achieved, and experienced so much.' Shubhanshu's father Shambhu Dayal, who retired as a joint secretary in 2013 in Lucknow, adds: 'All our worries and doubts have now been put to rest. We are only praying for his safe journey'. Born in Lucknow on October 10, 1985, Group Captain Shubhanshu is the last of three children and has three older siblings — Nidhi, 43, an MBA graduate and a homemaker and Suchi, a school teacher. He is also the first in his family to join the armed forces, with his family initially encouraging him to take up civil services. From the premier National Defence Academy, Shubhanshu was commissioned into the fighter stream of the Indian Air Force on June 17, 2006. 'I wanted to ask him to prepare for civil services after his Class 12 exams in 2002,' Shambhu says. 'But a friend of his decided to apply to the National Defence Academy (NDA). When he discovered that he was too old to qualify for the exam, he gave the form to Shubhanshu.' Shubhanshu married his wife Kamna Shukla, a dentist, in 2009. Kamna is currently in Florida with the couple's six-year-old son to see the launch of the mission. Over the years, Shubhanshu has served in various parts of the country — including Bhuj, Jodhpur, and Srinagar — and was in Bengaluru when his name was announced for the mission. Those who know him describe Shubhanshu as 'not reserved but not one to talk to everyone'. 'He respects everyone but prefers to connect only with those he feels comfortable around,' his sister Suchi says. Even as a child, he was 'very focused and very prompt when it came to his work,' his father Shambhu. 'He had very few close friends, mostly kept indoors and never went out alone to buy anything from the market, so it's unlikely that many people in the neighbourhood knew him well,' he says. Indeed, in Triveni Nagar, not much is known about Shubhanshu. 'We only found out that Shubhanshu is from our area when we saw it on the news. After speaking to others, we got to know more about him. We had never seen him before and didn't even know he had cleared the NDA,' Rakesh Mishra, a resident of Triveni Nagar, says. But at Shubhanshu's City Montessori School, it's a different story. His math teacher Nageshwar Prasad, 55, remembers him as a good student. 'Shubhanshu would give equal importance to sports and studies,' Prasad, who also taught Shubhanshu's wife Kamna, says. Back at the Shuklas, the family says that while they are no longer anxious, they admit to feeling jittery as the date of the take-off approaches. Despite this, they know that their son is not one to stray away from challenges. 'We were initially scared when he said he wanted to join the armed forces. Then we were anxious when he said he would spend over a year training in Russia to become an astronaut, mainly because he's never one to ever go out anywhere alone. But he's adapted himself to challenges,' his proud mother Asha says. While Shubhanshu's parents had initially planned to travel to Florida to see their son off, plans changed after his mother Asha developed severe spondylitis that made travel difficult. As a result, they take comfort in the little things – such as daily video calls and phone calls that he makes to assure them of his well-being. 'We now plan to hold a puja before his mission,' Shambhu says.
Hindustan Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Mission with next Indian in space pushed to June 10
The groundbreaking space mission that will make Air Force Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, only the second Indian to go to space, has been postponed to June 10, Axiom Space Inc announced on Tuesday—the second delay for the historic 14-day flight. Axiom Space Inc announced that the Ax-4 mission, originally scheduled for May 29 and later moved to June 8, will now lift off at 8:22am EST aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida for the International Space Station. The 39-year-old test pilot will join three international crew members on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, marking India's return to human spaceflight after a 40-year hiatus since Rakesh Sharma's pioneering mission in 1984. 'Since we both belong to the Indian Air Force and were also test pilots, he understands the journey and background I come from,' Shukla said, speaking of Sharma as his mentor during a virtual press conference with the crew. 'He navigated the same path in 1984 and guided me with sound advice which I am carrying along.' Shukla, who grew up reading about Sharma in textbooks, initially channeled his space fascination into flying fighter jets before India had a human spaceflight programme. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Gaganyaan mission in 2018—India's first indigenous crewed orbital flight—Shukla immediately applied for Indian Space Research Organisation's (Isro) Human Spaceflight Programme and remains among the top contenders, he said. The mission carries deep personal significance for Shukla, who will take a surprise gift to space for Sharma without revealing details. 'I will personally hand it over to him once I am back,' he said. Shukla said for himself, he will carry his favourite mango nectar, moong halwa and carrot halwa. Leading the Ax-4 crew is Peggy Whitson, a former Nasa astronaut commanding her second commercial human spaceflight mission. The team includes Sławosz Uznański, an ESA project astronaut who becomes the second Polish astronaut since 1978, and Tibor Kapu, Hungary's second national astronaut since 1980. The mission represents a significant milestone for all three nations, each returning to human spaceflight after more than four decades and visiting the ISS for the first time. Adding a touch of whimsy, the crew unveiled a fifth member—a swan named Joy serving as a Zero G indicator. Whitson explained the choice symbolised wisdom in India, resilience in Poland, and grace in Hungary. Shukla will conduct seven experiments during the mission, studying microgravity's impact on edible microalgae to analysing human interaction with electronic displays in space. From the ISS, Shukla will interact with students, academia, and space industry members, embodying what he describes as 'carrying the hopes and dreams of a billion hearts.' The crew entered a two-week quarantine phase in Florida on May 26 to ensure optimal health.
Mint
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
‘Dr Strangelove' remains the essential anti-war film
By all accounts, Stanley Kubrick was an obsessive. The kind of maniac who would put an actor through 97 takes because his smile wasn't smug enough. Considered both sadistic and clinical, the director was described by various collaborators as cold, manipulative, machine-like. Yet it took this famously impassive artist to make the most scorching, uproarious, goddamned hilarious anti-war film in cinema history. In the 1964 masterpiece Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb—available for rent on Amazon Prime and Apple TV—Kubrick doesn't just take apart military arrogance and political impotence, he makes them dance. The film isn't a screed or a sermon, but a ballet of buffoons set on the brink of Armageddon. It is without question the funniest film about the end of the world—which is precisely what makes it so terrifying. Released in the throes of the Cold War, Dr. Strangelove made audiences laugh while they looked over their shoulders for mushroom clouds. Today, its punches land even harder. What was once satire now feels like premonition. The hair-triggers are still cocked. The men in suits are still playing God. This is where Kubrick's genius lies: in taking a scenario so absurd—where a rogue US general launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union because he believes fluoridation is a communist plot to sap our 'precious bodily fluids"—and treating it with the straightest of faces. No mugging. No wink to the audience. Just a slow, methodical spiral into the kind of bureaucratic horror that would make Kafka giddy. The film is packed with characters whose names alone feel like punchlines: General Buck Turgidson, Colonel Bat Guano, President Merkin Muffley. Then there's the titular Doctor Strangelove, a wheelchair-bound ex-Nazi scientist with a mind of pure mayhem and a hand that keeps sieg-heil-ing against his will. These are caricatures sculpted to expose the rot beneath the rhetoric. These people who hold our fate in their trembling, chewing-gum-unwrapping fingers. Oh, what fingers they are. Let us bow, deeply and reverently, to Peter Sellers, who delivers not one, not two, but three peerless performances, playing Muffley, Strangelove and Air Force Group Captain Lionel Mandrake with such elastic comic timing and tonal control that he manages to tap-dance around the apocalypse. The actor is straight-man, bumbler and lunatic all rolled into one yet Kubrick never lets the film collapse under this triple-helix presence. Sellers' performances orbit each other like rogue satellites, each threatening collision. Opposite him, George C. Scott—playing the bellicose General Turgidson—gives a performance that's so manic, so perfectly pitched, it reportedly annoyed him to no end. Kubrick tricked him into it, asking him to do a few 'wild takes" for fun, and then using only those. The result is a portrait of military masculinity that's all chest-puffing and lip-quivering—the face of a man who wants to win a nuclear war because he's sure we'd lose 'only 10 or 20 million, tops". Kubrick lingers long enough to show us the cost beneath the farce. This can be seen in the sterile geometry of the War Room, that giant table looming like a sacrificial altar under the coldest lights in cinema. It's in the jingoistic anthem We'll Meet Again playing over images of nuclear devastation. It's in the way Dr. Strangelove rises from his wheelchair, shrieking 'Mein Führer! I can walk!"—a punchline that doubles as a death knell. Dr. Strangelove is a horror film. A satire, yes, but also a scream. Its terror lies in how plausible its absurdities feel. How quickly we accept the insanity because the men spouting it wear ties. The film's most devastating insight is that destruction doesn't come with fangs and fire—it comes with protocol and paperwork, and it's signed in triplicate. Kubrick shows how the systems built to protect us are riddled with paradox. That the logic of mutually assured destruction is the sort of chess game where everyone agrees the best move is to blow up the board. That nuclear deterrence is not strategy, but theology. And that war, no matter how cleanly it's strategised, is always—always—a failure of imagination. Dr. Strangelove, unforgettably, asks us not to fight in the War Room. That Cold War may be over, but rooms remain. New wars, new doctrines, new men with access codes. We live in an era where drone strikes are debated over lunch, and where world leaders can threaten annihilation—or promise ceasefires—in 280 characters or less. The war rooms are no longer underground bunkers; they're apps, algorithms, dashboards. The madness has gone digital. The absurdity persists. Across the globe, political discourse has calcified into nationalism's ugliest edge. Jingoism isn't just tolerated, but trending. World leaders channel their inner Buck Turgidsons, barking threats with the confidence of those who will never have to visit a battlefield. The idea of war has been flattened into meme and metaphor, something to cheer, share, repost. Satire is not about cynicism, but clarity. Comedy, when sharpened that much, can reveal truths too grotesque for drama. Dr. Strangelove is a reminder that art—real, dangerous, uncompromising art—is still our best weapon against war. Stop the bombing, love the worry. Kubrick saw this coming. A world where war is theatre and theatre is policy. Where destruction is not avoided but auditioned for. Where leaders speak only in binaries like victory and defeat, reducing a ruinous and potentially world-altering battle to something akin to a sporting score. This helps nobody. The blood of innocents, spilt on the ground and accounted for by none, is the only bodily fluid that matters. Raja Sen is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about killing critics, and is now creating an absurd comedy series. He posts @rajasen. Also read: Punk rockers Viagra Boys mix bizarro humour, nihilism and empathy
