The Missile Man’s tryst with Thumba

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Twenty newly-recruited scientists handpicked by Satish Dhawan, Vikram Sarabhai and Vasant Gowarikar were busy with their laboratory work at a cowshed behind the Magdalene church, Thumba,  in November  1963.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, one of them,  was not  expected to be part of the team that was to launch India’s first rocket from the Thumba  equatorial launching station here (now VSSC).

The young man convinced the interviewers about his  passion towards rocket technology  and they created an additional post to accommodate  him in  their team.

Thus,   Kalam came to be associated with INCOSPAR that would become the  Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Thumba being the hub of all research activities became Kalam’s home for 21 years.

Much to the envy of his peers, Kalam picked up the basics of managing projects that made him closer to Dhawan, whom he regarded as guru. Experiments were not as safe as they are  now at Thumba in the olden days.

“Kalam would be the first  to visit the hospital and spend long time with those who met with accidents,” says VSSC director K. Sivan.

Kalam used to spend most of his time in the  office and many a time slept there.  He was  detached from his family members who were at Rameshwaram, some  375 km from Thiruvananthapuram.

The game changer for VSSC as well as Kalam came in the early 70s when the government decided to put the SLV into space.

“The government decided to make him the SLV project director.  Recruiting  hundreds of new, young engineers for a single space mission was something that India had never tried. It was a totally different management concept,” remembers N. Vedachalam, scientist Emeritus of ISRO.

After many setbacks,  the  SLV project succeeded in 1980 and all the later launch vehicles, including PSLV and GSLV, evolved from this model.

“The top brass went to New Delhi to meet Indira Gandhi without   Kalam.  She was not ready to meet them without him and he was flown to Delhi from Thiruvananthapuram,” said a former scientist.

In 1982, Indira Gandhi called him back to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to fix a hiccup in Prithvi missile putting an end to his long stint in Thiruvananthapuram.

He not only set Prithvi right in just eight months but also announced the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) that gave the country a range of missiles, including Agni and Aakash.