India, July 19 -- Private firms are beginning to carry weight the state cannot. In May, Skyroot became India's first space unicorn, valued at $1.1 billion. The ecosystem counts over 300 startups and more than $600 million in cumulative venture funding. Agnikul Cosmos has flown the world's first fully 3D-printed rocket engine.

On Saturday, Sriharikota had its small midnight reckoning, and the rocket answered it. A 20-metre vehicle built wholly by a private Indian company rose cleanly into orbit, making Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 not merely a machine but a marker in the country's political imagination. Among its payloads was a German technology demonstrator, a detail easy to pass over and impossible, once noticed, to shrink back into tri...