The Indian Space Programme

by Gurbir Singh

  Far from leading a double life, however, the relationship was not secret. At the same time as professing his sincere love for his wife, Sarabhai appeared not to see the inevitable demise of his marriage. Biographer Amrita Shah captures this astonishing shortcoming by observing that his “… inability to anticipate his wife’s deep sense of hurt [betrayal], a startling naivety in a man capable of immense complex reasoning.”[312] Mrinalini, too, persisted with the marriage and did so without breaking her vows. Despite invitations from admirers, Mrinalini remained loyal.[313]

  Peaceful Uses

  One of the unique aspects of the space programme in India, unlike the motivations of other nations, was the absence of a military component at the outset. Its primary objective was the advancement of social and economic goals for the people of India. The non-military objective was repeatedly espoused by Sarabhai and others during his lifetime and has frequently been repeated since. However, there have been instances that demonstrated that the objectives of India's space and nuclear programmes are not entirely civilian.

  In early 1968, Prime Minister Gandhi announced a programme to develop “a device to help take-offs on short runways by high-performance military aircraft.”[314] Following Homi Bhabha’s death in 1966, Sarabhai was not only leading the space programme but also heading the DAE. The timing of the meeting and the accompanying secrecy suggest a shift in India’s space and nuclear programmes from purely civilian to include a military component. At the time, Indian military aircraft operating under extreme environmental conditions (high altitude, high temperature or geographically difficult terrain) and limited to short runways used Soviet-built rocket motors to assist in take-off. Sarabhai had met with Abdul Kalam and Group Captain V.S. Narayanan at 3:30 am on the same day before the public announcement was made. Sarabhai instructed Kalam and Narayanan to initiate a project to cut the cost of rockets by half and to manufacture rocket motors in India. He gave them 18 months to complete the task. For the first time, Sarabhai had unambiguously crossed the threshold from a civilian space programme and initiated INCOSPAR towards a programme to develop rockets for into the military domain. This contradicted his stated views on keeping the space programme non-military. At a personal level, this would have been a blow to his sense of integrity given his public stance but it was a requirement imposed on him.

  While Sarabhai is widely recognised as the father of the Indian space programme, Bhabha is acknowledged as the father of the Indian nuclear programme. Bhabha had his eyes set on India developing a nuclear deterrent and joining the nuclear weapons club along with the US, USSR, UK, France, China and Israel[315]. When Bhabha suddenly died in an air crash in 1966 and Sarabhai took over as Chairman of the DAE and secretary at the AEC, his first goal was to steer India away from Bhabha’s vision of an India with a nuclear bomb. Sarabhai’s vision centred on an India exploiting civilian uses of nuclear energy.[316] Peaceful Nuclear Explosions, as anachronistic as they may sound, were conducted several times during the 1960s and 1970s. These were tests conducted underground, with limited yield, for national economic development and had no military purpose. India’s intention to participate in such Peaceful Nuclear Explosions was thus a politically legitimate goal.[317]

  Sarabhai may not have succeeded completely in his goal of redirecting the nuclear programme in India towards a strictly civil one, but his desire for an India free of nuclear weapons was sincere. He had deep roots in the Jain tradition of non-violence and reverence for life. As a follower of Gandhi, he is likely to have been influenced by his values of non-violence, too. Writing in September 1948, Gandhi had insisted “I regard the employment of the atom bomb for the wholesale destruction of men, women and children as the most diabolical use of science.”[318] In public, Sarabhai asserted India's nuclear-weapon-free stance. In private, his position was ambiguous. One of his first decisions in his new role at the DAE and AEC was to formally end the theoretical work on the Subterranean Nuclear Explosion for Peaceful Purposes (SNEPP) programme, for which Bhabha had worked hard to acquire authorisation from Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.[319] Despite formally ending the SNEPP programme during his period in office, there is evidence that SNEPP activities in India did not stop. AEC engineers continued their design work on a potential nuclear explosive device for India. Amrita Shah details the evidence and concludes “It is possible that Vikram knew, he either had been informed or had discovered it himself, and chose to say nothing.”[320]

  In 1971, India was caught in the fight between East and West Pakistan. One nation in two parts separated by almost 1,000 miles (over 1,600 km) of Indian territory was an awkward product of independence. On 26 March 1971, the largely Bengali population of East Pakistan declared independence as the new nation of Bangladesh. The Indian government established its allegiance with Bangladesh possibly fearing a massive refugee influx. The Bangladeshi government in exile was offered refuge in Calcutta. In response to a direct military strike by Pakistan on India, India's military retaliated on 3 December 1971. It was inevitable that the relatively small Pakistani force would capitulate to the overwhelmingly large Indian troops supported by native Bengali freedom fighters. On 16 December 1971, Pakistani forces signed the instrument of surrender to the Indian-Bangladeshi allied forces. The possibility of war had reawakened the desire in some parts of the Indian military for India to develop its nuclear weapons. Sarabhai had established his opposition to India developing its nuclear weapons capability. If Indira Gandhi was to pursue the nuclear weapons option for India, she had to remove the key obstacle: Vikram Sarabhai. In the last week of November 1971, Prime Minister Gandhi told Sarabhai of her intention to move him out of the DAE and into the new DOS.[321] Perhaps, Sarabhai recognised that his fight for a nuclear-weapon-free India was lost.

  Sudden Peaceful Death

  Sarabhai was approaching the end of his first decade in a high government office. Moving from the orderly world of science determined by the unchanging logic of mathematics to the scheming, ambiguous world of politics must have been a challenge. However, he stuck to his primary objective of raising the quality of life of the nation’s poor through the power of science and technology. Occasionally, this clashed with his duty to meet the requirements of national security and international collaboration. Maintaining this subtle balance was to take its toll. Ever since taking on the mantle of the DAE from Bhabha in 1966, Sarabhai had worked in a stressful environment over long hours. His workload grew with time. One of his earliest recruits, R. Aravamudan recalled “Meetings with him would continue well into midnight. They would start again at dawn the next day and sometimes continue at the airport until he boarded the aircraft. Some meetings took place on the aircraft itself!”[322] The intensity of his daily obligations, the pressure of the war in 1971 and the knowledge that he would be moved from his high-level position and possibly forgo ready access to the prime minister could have triggered a burden his body could no longer bear.

  On the morning of Thursday, 30 December 1971, Vikram Sarabhai was found dead in bed, having died apparently peacefully in his sleep. A book he was reading lay on his chest. His sudden death at 52 shocked his family and friends and left India in a panic reminiscent of that in 1966 when Bhabha had died in an air crash. Abdul Kalam, an engineer by training, who went on to hold probably the highest political office that any rocket engineer has ever held by becoming the 11th President of India in 2002, describes Sarabhai’s pioneering style as a “great example of leadership by trust.”[323] Kalam was one of the last persons to whom he had spoken before he died and would have been the next to meet, had he not. Sarabhai had asked Kalam to wait for him at Trivandrum airport. By chance, Kalam was arriving from Delhi following his regular missile panel meeting and Sarabhai was departing to Bombay on the same day. Kalam recalls “I was shocked to the core; it had happened within an hour of our conversation.”[324]

  As Sarabhai had not been ill, his death had not been anticipated. However, his wife, Mrinalini, recalls that “even though he did not confi
de his work problems to me, I knew instinctively that he was under a great deal of stress.”[325] The extent of that stress was common knowledge even beyond the close circle of friends and family. Jacques Blamont (born 1926), who helped in establishing the space programme in France in the early 1960s and assisted Sarabhai in setting up the space programme in India, also considers that Sarabhai’s excessive workload contributed to his early death.[326]

  Figure 6‑4 Vikram Sarabhai R. Aravamudan and an Apollo 11 Moonrock at

  Thumba in 1969. Credit R. Aravamudan

  An anonymous official within the Indian Government indicated that concerns about Sarabhai’s health had reached the highest levels; Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was aware of Sarabhai’s workload and had remarked that he would die if he went on like this.[327] Sarabhai’s legacy is firmly and inextricably woven not only into ISRO’s infrastructure but also in the hearts and minds of those who work there. M.G.K. Menon (1928–2016), who took over in the immediate aftermath of Sarabhai’s sudden death, turned to Sarabhai’s companion and professional partner Kamla Kapur “to analyse Vikram’s ideas on the institutional management framework.”[328] In 1972, in a tribute to the man who inspired it, the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launch Station (TERLS) was renamed the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC). By then, VSSC had grown into a large, high-technology complex. Additional facilities developed included Space Science and Technology Centre, Propellant Fuel Complex and Rocket Fabrication Facility. These segregated units were merged into a single entity and renamed VSSC in June 1972. Four decades on, ISRO has expanded its footprint throughout India and beyond, but VSSC remains its largest complex.

  Figure 6‑5 Crater Sarabhai 4.66 mile (7.5 km). Photographed by Apollo 15 Command Module Pilot Al Worden from Lunar Orbit. 30 July 1971. Credit NASA

  Most accounts of Sarabhai’s life are short, informal and overwhelmingly hagiographical. When the extent of his contribution to the development of Indian space programme is fully assessed, he stands tall and justly deserves the national accolade as the father of Indian space programme.[329] If anything, his enormous accomplishment of promoting the crucial and wider role of science and technology in India’s development, not just in the space programme, is yet to be fully appreciated. Sarabhai’s passionate advocacy of “indigenisation and self-reliance” that he imbued INCOSPAR with, from which ISRO emerged in 1969, continues to inform the culture of ISRO and India.[330] Writing in 2001, Professor U.R. Rao insists “Sarabhai’s vision on the development of space technology and its extensive application for the betterment of society continues to be the guiding light of our space programme even today.”[331] Many of the institutions he established continue to have a transformative impact on India in the 21st century.

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  Chapter Seven

  First Launch

  T he true beginnings of the Space Age lie in the International Geophysical Year (IGY) 1957–58 and not the Cold War as is commonly thought.[332] The International Polar Years of 1882–83 and 1932–33 had already demonstrated how international scientific collaboration could be leveraged to learn about the Earth. The IGY was modelled on and shared an objective similar to the International Polar Year programmes, which had aimed to understand the Earth’s polar regions through international collaborative science programmes. An enormous investment of time and resources during World War II had contributed to an unprecedented accelerated development in rocket technology in the US and Europe. The IGY provided an opportunity to engage the technology that had been developed a few years earlier for war in the pursuit of peace.

  The idea of what became the IGY had crystallised four years earlier during a dinner party on 5 April 1950 held by James Van Allen (1914–2006) at his private residence.[333] A special committee for the IGY had its first plenary session in Brussels between 30 June and 3 July 1953. By then, 30 national academies had responded positively to a programme of research to cover the entire surface of the Earth. India was represented by Vikram Sarabhai.[334] The IGY was formally proposed by the National Academy of Science to the Assistant to the US President Eisenhower in a letter dated 21 April 1954. The letter stated that it would be a “major international cooperative undertaking.”[335]

  In pursuit of President Eisenhower’s desire for international collaboration and enthusiasm for the US as a world leader, a budget of $12.5 million (Rs.5.95 crore) was approved on 2 June 1954 for the IGY.[336] The proposal was taken up by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU),[337] and the scope extended to include not just the north and south poles but the entire planet. The ICSU established the IGY to study 11 areas of Earth Sciences, including cosmic rays, ionospheric physics, longitude, meteorology and solar activity. In 1958, it established the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) with a focus on international scientific collaboration on space research. Four years later, COSPAR led to the creation of INCOSPAR in India which oversaw all India’s space activities until the establishment of ISRO in 1969. Initially, planned for just one year, the IGY was extended to 18 months. It started on 1 July 1957 and concluded on 31 December 1958. IGY was stretched to encompass the expected peak of solar activity that occurs once every 11 years.[338] During this period, Indian scientists and institutions across India, including Amritsar, Jodhpur, Bombay (now Mumbai), Poona (now Pune), Kodaikanal, Dehradun, Gulmarg, Delhi, Madras (now Chennai), Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram) and Nainital, participated in the IGY. They were involved in studying cosmic rays, aurora, meteorology, geomagnetism, ionosphere and solar activity.

  Figure 7‑1 International Geophysical Year 1957-58. Credit NASA

  Eventually, 76 nations took part in the various scientific programmes under the IGY, including the USSR and US, but not China, which was in a state of great upheaval following the communist takeover.[339] It was so successful that when 1 January 1959 arrived, no one wanted the idea of the IGY to end. The spirit of the IGY and the scientific collaborative alliances it helped to nurture was renamed and continued under the International Geophysical Cooperation. The IGY concentrated on understanding the Sun’s 11-year cycle. A peak in solar activity on the sun’s surface (prominences, flares, sunspots and coronal mass ejections) is followed by a trough, a quiet period 5.5 years later. The ICSU had defined this as the International Quiet Sun Years (IQSY), which was to commence on 1 January 1964.[340] The collaboration continued through the IQSY from 1 January 1964 to 31 December 1965 and examined the Sun during this solar minimum phase of its 11-year cycle.

  A decade after the end of World War II, both the USSR and the US had developed nuclear weapons and emerged as competing global superpowers. During the political hostility of the Cold War, the IGY gave rise to a unique environment where science came before politics and facilitated genuine international collaboration. The dark shadow of national self-interest, secret projects and espionage that marked the Cold War was by and large replaced the warm and friendly environment of the IGY. Intentions of putting a satellite into space using rockets were discussed openly during public meetings between international scientists.

  Figure 7‑2 Sputnik. First Artificial Satellite Launched by the USSR.

  4 October 1957. Credit NASA

  In October 1954, during a public meeting of the ICSU in Rome, a resolution was adopted that stated “in view of the advanced state of present rocket techniques, thought should be given to the launching of small satellite vehicles.”[341] A White House press statement on 29 July 1955 announced “plans are going forward for the launching of a small, unmanned Earth-circling satellite as part of US's participation in the IGY.”[342] Had the US been on schedule, Explorer One would have been launched in November 1957.[343] But the launch was delayed because of numerous problems with the proposed launcher. The problems were not trivial and included the lack of sufficient thrust in the first stage, the need for a redesign in the second stage and the third stage it was simply too heavy.[344] Nevertheless, Explorer One played a key role in hastening the arrival of the Space Age. In hindsight, it looks as if the adva
nce notice by the US that Explorer One would be launched by November 1957 was the motivation for the USSR’s dash to launch Sputnik in October 1957.

  The USSR had announced in June 1957 their intentions to launch a satellite during IGY, but it did not gain much media attention at the time.[345] Sputnik was launched by the USSR into space on 4 October 1957. On 5 October, the headline in Pravda, the leading newspaper in the USSR, was not about the launch of Sputnik but that ‘Preparation for winter is an Urgent Task’.[346] The launch of the satellite was a technologically astonishing achievement, and the USSR was completely oblivious to the international response Sputnik gave rise to. The extraordinary political commotion in the US following the launch of Sputnik surprised even the USSR. It was this unexpected, perhaps unwarranted, response to the launch of Sputnik that directly led to the epic rivalry of the Space Race.

  As the IGY drew to a close in 1958, the countries that had participated in its numerous collaborative scientific programmes sought out new national structures through which progress could be sustained. Fired by the USSR’s success with Sputnik, nations around the globe were eager not to be left out of the new frontier. Before the year was out, on 29 July 1958, the US had established NASA, and on 18 December 1958, the UK had established the British National Committee for Space Research (BNCSR). China, France and Argentina were a few of the other nations that initiated their space programmes.