Susmita Mohanty: Space is not a frontier

To celebrate Sydney Science Festival 2024 Powerhouse Associate Ceridwen Dovey interviewed this year's keynotes, Susmita Mohanty, Maya Nasr and Xin Liu.

Dr Susmita Mohanty is a pioneering space entrepreneur and advocate for space exploration known for her leadership in the field of commercial spaceflight. She began her career with NASA and Boeing, and is the only entrepreneur in the world to have co-founded three space companies on three different continents. As the co-founder and CEO of Earth2Orbit, India’s first space start up, and co-founder of India’s first space think tank SARABHAI (S2), she has played a key role in advancing India's space industry and promoting international collaboration in space research and exploration.

Ceridwen Dovey Tell us the extraordinary story of how the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (author of 2001: A Space Odyssey) became your mentor and benefactor after you wrote to him as a student, asking for help to pursue your dream of a space career.

Susmita Mohanty I was raised in Ahmedabad in India. My formative years were spent in the scientific milieu of the early Indian space program. The space program founder, Dr Vikram Sarabhai, was based there, and he’d recruited my dad to join him. I was also influenced by amazing architects who’d been commissioned to build public buildings in Ahmedabad, like Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Charles Correa and B.V. Doshi. Growing up around space pioneers and contemporary architects, I became smitten with the idea of designing things to solve the problems of living and working in microgravity.

In 1996, I needed to raise $35,000 to attend the International Space University (ISU) in Strasbourg, France. I had my Bachelors in Engineering and Masters in Industrial Design, but I wanted to join a global network of young people passionate about space. To seek scholarship support, I wrote to 70 non-profit foundations in India, to the United Nations, and to people like Carl Sagan, Bill Gates and Arthur C. Clarke, including synopses of my microgravity design projects.