VS brought about a project to bring USA’s (yet to be built satellite) Application Technology satellite—ATS-F over India for Satellite Television Experiment—SITE, a major innovation in those days to use satellite broadcast from space to reach villages in India. In the process his rocket team got more confidence some amongst them were Sudhakar and Madhavan Nair. It was not just talk he started indigenising what he could do within TERLS/ ISRO’s capabilities—nose cones, split nose-cones, nose cones made of fibre glass. There was an impulse inside him (I know it personally through my conversations with him when he used to visit Ahmedabad from 1965 onwards to coordinate with space scientists of PRL or the Physical Research Laboratory—the cradle of ISP), Kalam wanted to make the sounding rockets in India and design further to make huge rockets that could launch Indian satellites (such rockets are called Satellite Launch Vehicles to distinguish them from the missiles which hit the targets on the ground or air). He could have been happy launching rockets bought to TERLS through Vikram Sarabhai’s (VS) good offices. That training was limited to the launch of rockets (Nike Apache—missiles turned scientific sounding rockets). He was a rocket engineer trained briefly at USA’s NASA Wallop Rocket Launching station. He started his career in TERLS during 1963—later in 1969, all these ISP outfits came to be known as Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). He was amongst the earliest recruits to the ISP. One of the tallest amongst them was Avul Pakir Jainulabudin Abdul Kalam (known to many as Kalam, and he himself would pick up the phone and say “Kalam here”). That challenge, though a hurdle in the short term, helped create many heroes (male and female), who have made India self-reliant in many aspects and ensured global respect for its space technology strengths. ISP started with a small cluster of remarkable persons—scientists, engineers, technicians, and administrators, who made several breakthroughs in building up a technological infrastructure even amidst an international geopolitical strategy to deny India certain critical technologies for the ISP. ISP had made India proud and continues to increase India’s stature in the comity of nations (developed, emerging and developing). The birth, growth and performance of the Indian Space Programme (ISP) is a remarkable achievement of independent India. Domestic political support gave it the ecosystem to grow further. The mother who conceived the baby and gave it an ambitious vision and plan was Vikram Sarabhai, whose remarkable international contacts (networks in modern day terminology) helped a great deal to incubate the baby into robust health. Rajan: Fifteen years after India’s independence, the country quietly crawled into space research, taking baby steps at the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) near Thiruvananthapuram.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |