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Shoot-out at Lokhandwala - Aakhri Alvida

Space Exploration Starts @ Home
"We are on the same ground floor as the western nations. They are leading us only by about 4-5 years. Hence in the course of 10-20 years we must be able to equal them," these were the words of Homi.J.Bhabha, the father of India's Nuclear Research Program.

A remarkably insightful statement from a man who had seen the future in 1962. But don't assume the obvious – he was not talking about nuclear energy or weapons program.

Set on fulfilling Bhabha's noteworthy prophesy, India laid the foundation and constructed the said ground floor at a place a few kilometers north of the city I grew up, Trivandrum. The location of India's ambitious project was a virtual herb garden of thumba flowers(Leuca Indica), had a church ripe to ignite communal tensions. It also happened to sit on earth's magnetic equator . The last point was the deciding factor, in case you have not figured that out already.

The architect in charge was Vikram Sarabhai, 'the building' in question was India's Space Research Program. The ground floor Sarabhai and Co. built was named Thumba Equatorial Rocket Lauching Station(TERLS). The inaugural flight was an American made Nike-Apache rocket with a sodium vapor payload(from France) assembled at the nearby Mary Magdalene Church(which later became the Space Museum) and launched on Nov 21, 1963. The establishment of TERLS gave birth to Indian Space Research Organization(1969).

(It'd be interesting to note that Thumba almost missed out on being the promised land of space exploration. First choice was an island in Ashtamudi lagoon – an extensive network of backwaters near Quilon, Kerala. It was voted down because it had a real "inauspicious" name – 'Vellanathuruthu' or The Island of the White Elephant. Thumba was Plan B.)

Later TERLS and all the other related research and development establishments that developed alongside in Trivandrum were together christened Vikram Sarabhai Space Center(VSSC) in memory of India's first rocket-scientist.

Sarabhai and Bhabha – The Pioneers

It was this same program which sponsored half of my life till I could earn on my own. My father spent almost his entire career at TERLS. ISRO(Indian Space Research Organization) paid half our bills(my mother sponsored the other half.) At that time it had looked like ISRO did indeed support the lives of about 50% of the people in Trivandrum – directly or indirectly, such was the diversity and numbers of people VSSC / ISRO attracted from all over India.

I remember the huge family get-togethers held once or twice a year at VSSC-ISRO campus spread out over several kilometers around Thumba. The city was divided in to zones and employees' families from one zone were allowed to visit on a particular day. The mega family get-together usually lasted a week or so.

The visit included tours of the facility and wound up with the launch of a sounding rocket for the entertainment pleasure of the visitors (as well for research purposes) in the evening. The eager crowd piled up in VSSC buses(they had a huge fleet, still have) on these guided tours and were taken from one facility to the other. There were also permanent exhibits and Space Museum stop-overs as a part of the tour where you could get acquainted with the photos of the early years of the institution, model rockets and satellites.

I came across one such photograph while surfing which prompted this post.


These two photographs of how the rocket cone was transported to the assembly site in 1963 are pretty famous.


The first rocket being readied for launch




Dr. Abdul Kalam (now the President of India) was amongst the team of rocket engineers who went for a 6 months training program in the US before the first rocket launch in 1963.


Young Kalam with Sarabhai

Over four decades ISRO has grown by leaps and bounds, from upcoming unmanned mission to moon(Chandrayan) to entering the lucrative market of launching payloads of other nations using its own rockets from Indian soil.


PSLV-C8, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle(PSLV)'s eleventh flight and its first commercial flight ready to launch Italian astronomical satellite, AGILE into orbit on Apr 23, 2007.


India is one of the handful of nations in the world to have re-entry technology. For a sixty year old independent nation, we did not fare too bad. Godspeed ISRO! There, I had my patriotic fix, this should last for a while.


Sources: Photos sponsored by Google Server farms.
Thumba, ISRO, Vikram Sarabhai, Great Images in Nasa, Nasa History, ISRO Photo Gallery , The Hindu, BBC