The Indian Space Programme

by Gurbir Singh

  Bhabha had developed an international reputation and could have easily found a post heading a department of physics in many of the leading universities in the West. In one instance in 1939, he was interviewed but not selected for a teaching post in Liverpool University because the work would be “drudgery to a man like Bhabha who was a most exceptional man.”[252] This was the conclusion of the interviewer James Chadwick, a Nobel Laureate who had discovered the neutron in 1932. Perhaps, this was a genuine assessment of his intellectual ability or rejection concealed in compliment. However, Bhabha successfully turned to the Royal Society for a grant to work with Blackett in his laboratory in Manchester.[253] Before taking up that role, Bhabha returned to India for a holiday. A few months later, World War II broke out in Europe, preventing his return. Instead of returning to Europe, Bhabha joined IISc in Bangalore as Special Reader working alongside C.V. Raman in 1940. Following his nomination as a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1941, arguably his highest international recognition, he became a full professor at the IISc in 1942.[254]

  Figure 4‑9 Indian Institute of Science prior to the reorganisation in 1948. From Altor Homi Bhabha Registrar A.G. Pai Director J.C. Ghosh J. Taylor C.V. Raman. Credit IISc Archives

  Despite the uncertainty of war, one thing was clear; Indian independence was imminent. As a new nation, independent India would need to be built up from scratch. On gaining independence, India would offer the unique opportunity to build in science and technology into the fabric of a national economy from the outset. Bhabha had spent time in Europe and understood the key role of science and technology in industrialised societies. India, at the time, was devoid of scientific institutions of international repute and lacked the infrastructure of higher education and a culture of science within the population at large. Bhabha contemplated his future and how he could use science to shape the destiny of a new emerging nation.

  A prerequisite for successful leaders of large national programmes is direct access to the highest political office. As an example, Sergei Korolev, the chief designer responsible for Sputnik in 1957 and Yuri Gagarin's space mission four years later, had direct access to the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. In the US, Wernher von Braun had the ear of the US President John F. Kennedy after he had committed the US to land a man on the Moon. To achieve his objective of transforming India into an economically developed nation through industrialisation, Bhabha too required personal access to India’s highest political office. For Bhabha, such access was easily achieved, not least because Bhabha and Nehru had close personal ties for many years, but also because Nehru shared the vision of India built on science and technology. In Bhabha, Nehru saw someone who could help deliver the vision. India approached independence as the World War II approached an end in Europe. Having founded the TIFR in 1945, Bhabha acquired perhaps the highest profile of any scientist in India.

  For a national programme of development based on industry, nationwide power infrastructure was a fundamental prerequisite. Bhabha, a physicist, looking into the future, not the past, believed that nuclear power source, not coal, was the route for India. Even before India was independent and Nehru became its Prime Minister, Bhabha had started the preliminary work on India’s nuclear energy programme. It was clear to him that international collaboration was going to be the key ingredient to fast-tracking India’s ambitions of national development. Bhabha visited Sir John Cockcroft, the Director of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in the UK, and W. Bennet Lewis (1908–1987) in Canada. In June 1947, he made his first request to the National Research Council of Canada for a tonne of crude uranium oxide so that Indian scientists could start to experiment. Although India had no natural deposits of uranium, it did have a large supply of thorium. With an eye on India as a future source of thorium, Canada supplied the uranium ore, and neither the UK nor the US objected.[255]

  One of the most influential of Bhabha's contacts was Patrick Blackett. Apart from his long-standing professional contact, Blackett had high-level experience as an advisor to the British government before, during and after the War in all aspects of science and technology. Importantly, Blackett was motivated by socialist ideals and was sympathetic to the needs of the developing world.[256] In a letter dated 9 January 1948, Bhabha wrote to Blackett saying that he was very “anxious to see you before you leave Manchester for the US”. The purpose of the meeting was to “explore the possibility of cooperation in atomic energy research between your country and mine.”[257] By the end of 1948, India was independent, Nehru its Prime Minister and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was in place. The AEC was established in August 1948, primarily under the guidance Bhabha had provided to Nehru, and with it, he had given Bhabha the nod to start the journey to set India on a path of self-sufficiency in energy.

  Figure 4‑10 Sketch of C.V. Raman by Homi Bhabha. 1945. Credit IISc Archives

  As the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, technological successes, such as Sputnik and Gagarin, raised the appetite for political and financial commitment to science and technology, not just in the US and the USSR, but in Europe, too. It is conceivable that Bhabha’s strong connections with Europe triggered his vision for an Indian space programme. Fearing being left behind once more, in 1962, Bhabha stated “We are on the same ground floor as the Western nations. They are leading us only by about 4 or 5 years .... Hence during 10–20 years, we must be able to equal them.”[258]

  In August 1962, as the Chairman of India’s leading scientific body, the DAE, Bhabha proposed that India should pursue space research, too. The Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) was identified as the appropriate centre for it, and INCOSPAR (later ISRO) was established.[259] Bhabha selected Vikram Sarabhai, a cosmic ray physicist, to lead it. With great haste, a year later, India had constructed a launch facility in Thumba and launched its first rocket into space. INCOSPAR operated under the AEC and until transferred to the DOS in 1969. Bhabha built two institutions, TIFR and the Atomic Energy Establishment (now the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC)), Trombay. The objective for both was to help develop a prosperous and self-sufficient India. TIFR has been Bhabha’s legacy for ISRO; it still produces state-of-the-art instruments used onboard ISRO’s. He wanted India to be militarily strong, too. In 1958, he told Blackett that he hoped to develop nuclear weapons.[260] Bhabha, however, could not persuade Nehru for approval to develop nuclear weapons. Nehru instead that the nuclear programme was limited to the production of energy civilian use.

  The US and the former USSR had developed nuclear weapons as a national military programme from the outset. Other nations ostensibly started with civil nuclear energy projects that later evolved into nuclear weapons programmes. Today, nine nations are believed to have a national nuclear weapons programme, the US, the USSR, China, France, the UK, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. The successful nuclear test by China in October 1964 finally forced the then new prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966), Nehru's successor, to give Bhabha the go-ahead.

  Bhabha simultaneously held the three most important positions in the Indian atomic energy programme. He was the Chairman of the AEC, Secretary for the DAE and Director of the Atomic Energy Establishment in Trombay, while he continued to be the Director at TIFR, too. Consequently, his sudden death in 1966 was traumatic for the higher echelons of the Indian government. Who could step into his shoes? In January 1966, his routine Air India flight had crashed into the Alps as it descended towards Geneva.[261] India's future in scientific research, atomic energy, as well as its space programme suddenly found itself in a crisis. Just three years after its first rocket launch, the fledgeling Indian space programme had to absorb the sudden and profound shock of losing its founder and champion, Homi Bhabha. Bhabha’s death, however, introduced a dramatic change to Vikram Sarabhai's career. Although not the first choice, Sarabhai succeeded Bhabha as the Chairman of the AEC, while continuing to lead the space programme.[262]

  The Nehru-Bhabha partnership, with key contributions from many others during the first t
wo decades after independence, moved India dramatically towards a developed country. That pace of development suffered a sudden shock with the demise of Nehru in 1964 and of Bhabha two years later. Despite Bhabha’s enormous contribution, his achievements will always be dwarfed by the scale of the tasks demanded by nation-building.

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  Chapter Five

  India's Forgotten Rocketeer

  O n 25 May 2012, an American private company SpaceX, used a rocket to transport supplies from the surface of the Earth to the International Space Station in low Earth orbit (LEO). However, this was not the first time that rocket power had been used as a transport mechanism by a non-governmental agency. Over half a century earlier, on 10 April 1935 at 15:35, rocket power was used for the first time in India to transport materials.

  Figure 5‑1 Stephen H. Smith. Credit Superior Galleries

  Rockets had already been used to transport mail, but in this instance, a disparate collection of everyday items, including toothbrush, cigarettes, a spoon and a handkerchief were transported across River Ranikhola from Saramsa (now Saramsa) to Rey in Sikkim. The man behind the flight was Stephen Hector Taylor-Smith (1891–1951), usually abbreviated to Stephen Smith, a name that is not well known today either within or outside India. Like all early rocket pioneers around the world, his endeavour was largely self-funded and on a private small-scale. Smith received encouragement and active participation from the King of Sikkim, His Highness Sir Tashi Namgyal (1893–1963), along with several British representatives of the Indian Civil Service.

  On 6 June the same year, another of Smith’s rockets transported a half-kilogram payload about a kilometre across the River Roopnarayan in West Bengal. The launch was a symbolic demonstration of the delivery of materials required in the immediate aftermath of an emergency, like the devastating earthquake in Baluchistan weeks before this flight. The consignment included rolls of bandages, lint, iodine and aspirin. The flight demonstrated the simplicity and astonishing speed with which rockets could be used for rapid transport in times of urgent need, especially in a difficult mountainous terrain.

  Figure 5‑2 Cover Flown in the First Airmail Flight, Allahabad 1911.

  Credit India Study Circle - India Post January–March 2011

  Around three weeks later, in a record-making flight on 29 June 1935, Smith transported livestock, a small cock and a hen, about a kilometre across the Damodar River, demonstrating that living beings were capable of sustaining the immense acceleration generated during a rocket flight. His rocket did not use parachutes and remarkably the passengers, christened Adam and Eve, survived the hard landing. Acknowledging his own surprise, Smith recorded in his diary that “Sheer luck with a capital L, the wind and the soft sand helped me. These were in my opinion the greatest factors to the birds being alive.”[263] Both birds were thriving 18 months later when Smith visited them at his patron Sir David Ezra’s private zoo in Calcutta.

  Smith’s achievements were recorded in the international press and specialist magazines on rockets and spaceflight.[264] A global revolution was taking place in aerial transport just when Smith was starting out on his adult life. By the early 1920s, when pigeon mail was still in routine use, India saw the introduction of aerial transport of cargo, regular airmail and scheduled passenger flights.

  Figure 5‑3 Letter from the King to Stephen H. Smith Marking the First Airmail Flight between Britain and India. Credit Eric Winter

  Large countries, like India, with varied topography, benefit from air transport more than others. In the same week that Smith turned 20, the world’s first airmail flight had taken off from Allahabad on 18 February 1911. It would have made international headlines and would have inspired Smith, who was in school in Asansol 600 km from Allahabad, to take an interest in tracking and recording the developments in airmail. Just as steam engine locomotives had inspired enthusiasts in the past and spaceflight does today.

  In the 1920s, aeroplanes joined airships in flying long-haul routes crossing seas, oceans and continents. Initially, a series of tentative and exploratory short hops explored routes between Europe, Middle East and Asia; they were pioneered by Imperial Airways to help administer the growing empire.[265] These routes were later used for regularly scheduled passenger flights, commercial cargo and military transport, all of which would eventually become commonplace in many countries. The first airmail service from England to India was flown by Imperial Airways. The flight left Croydon airport on 30 March 1929 and arrived in Karachi on 6 April. On the return flight the following day, Smith sent a letter to the King at Buckingham Palace in London. The King’s Private Secretary responded on 19 April on behalf of the King acknowledging his letter.

  India was not alone in experimenting with rocket-assisted transport. In Europe, similar experiments were first conducted in the late 1920s. German engineers and adventurers experimented with rocket-powered cars, motorbikes and planes. The German industrialist Fritz von Opel (1899–1971), along with Max Valier (1895–1930), promoted rocket-powered cars through public demonstrations on open roads and on rail tracks. In 1930, Max Valier was killed when a rocket engine exploded, and he became perhaps the first victim of rocketry. On 11 June 1928, Fritz Stamer (1897–1969) successfully demonstrated in Germany that rockets could be used to power a glider in flight.[266]

  Air and Rocket Mail

  The world’s first rocket mail experiment was conducted by an Austrian, Friedrich Schmiedl (1902–1994).[267] Having completed six test flights over the preceding three years, on 2 February 1931, he fired his mail-carrying rocket from the summit of Schöckl Mountain to Radegund in the valley below in south-eastern Austria. His work was largely unrecognised during his time.

  Schmiedl’s interest was in launching rockets from an unusual platform. Inspired by Nobel laureate Victor Hess’s (1883–1964) work in the early 1920s, Schmiedl developed what he called a Strato balloon. Hess used to conduct his balloon flights during the day and night at great personal risk, given the limitations of the early 20th-century balloon technology. Unlike Hess, Schmiedl did not go up in his balloons. Instead, he would launch a balloon with an attached rocket. To track the balloon, he incorporated a magnetised rod that maintained the position of an aluminium flag, which reflected the Sun towards the Earth-based observer. Once the balloon was at 15 km, the rocket would automatically launch.

  After Schmiedl’s successful experiments in Austria in 1931, rocket mail experiments were repeated and developed further in many countries around the world, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Cuba, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, Spain, Switzerland and the US. ⁠[268] However, Smith was the only one launching rockets in India. He experimented with rocket launches from ship to shore, shore to ship, at night time, across rough terrain and rivers.

  Rocket mail was not just the domain of enthusiastic amateurs but accomplished rocket engineers, too. Robert Goddard, whom history remembers as the founding father of rocketry, had pioneered the use of LOX and kerosene to power rockets. Oxygen is liquid at -183°C, and this was a daunting engineering challenge that Goddard surmounted in 1926. On 2 July 1936, he conducted the first international rocket mail experiments by sending 1,072 covers from Texas, USA, to Taaulipas in Mexico.[269] Before the day was out, Goddard crossed the border and repeated the experiment from Mexico.

  Figure 5‑4 Regulus I Missile Fired from USS Barbero. 8 June 1959. Credit Smithsonian Postal Museum

  The most advanced demonstration of rocket mail came out of a collaborative experiment between the US Department of Defence and the US Post Office Department.[270] It was more missile mail than rocket mail. A modified Regulus surface-to-surface training missile launched from the US Navy submarine USS Barbero (SSG-317) off the coast of Virginia delivered 3,000 commemorative letters to Florida. The missile landed on a runway at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Mayport, Florida, 22 minutes after launch under automatic control. One of the 3,000 letters were then delivered by hand to the US President Eisenho
wer in Washington. This was the first and the only time that missiles were used for mail transport.

  On the strength of this single but impeccably successful experiment, the US Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield (1899–1972) declared that “Before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India, or Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.”[271] This was in 1959. The space race was on, but Kennedy’s declaration to go to the Moon was still two years away. Perhaps, at the time of the experiment, the Postmaster’s vision was entirely realistic.

  Figure 5‑5 Covers flown to the Moon on Apollo 15 July 1971. Credit NASA

  The ultimate example of rocket mail was the mail that went to the Moon. Between 1968 and 1972, 24 men went to the Moon on nine manned missions of the American Apollo programme, half of them walking on its surface. Each astronaut was permitted to take a limited quantity of personal items (2.5 kg aboard the command module and 0.25 kg in the lunar module). Declaring the contents of these Personal Preference Kits was at the discretion of the astronaut. These kits included signed covers, which could then be sold to collectors once the Apollo missions were over. One such cover flown on Apollo 15 was sold for $10,350 (Rs. 435,243) in 2007.[272] Not all covers were flown. Some remained with family members on Earth as a form of insurance. The astronauts received standard salaries paid to pilots during the space programme, and all spaceflights were high risk. In the event of an astronaut’s death, these signed covers left with their families on Earth could generate some financial compensation.