A tryst with rocketry

ISRO

A Personal History

R Aravamudan with Gita Aravamudan

HarperCollins

240 pages; Rs 399

If you are unfamiliar with the Indian space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), then it is firmly recommended that you begin reading this book from its annexure right at the end. Before you get to the launching of any rocket, you first have to swim against the swell in an ocean of acronyms; it appears the folks at ISRO have been quite fond of them since the agency’s humble inception in the 1960s. In fact, this book might create some kind of a record for the most acronyms in a single book. Any party games at ISRO must be fun if the staff is asked to expand various acronyms after a few stiff drinks.

The author is the genial six-foot-plus Ramabhadran Aravamudan, one of the core group that is fondly called the founding scientists of the space agency. If you have been following India’s space story, you will remember a historic image from 1964 which depicts the former President A P J Abdul Kalam, assembling a small rocket with a bespectacled gentleman clad in a sleeveless vest. The man in the vest is Mr Aravamudan. 

There have been books on ISRO written before by former staffers, but they have not been tailored for a larger audience that is unfamiliar with the story. This effort by Mr Aravamudan is a far easier read thanks to the collaboration with his journalist wife Gita Aravamudan, who has probably contributed greatly to translating the rocketry jargon for the common reader. 

Being one of the founding scientists, the story begins with Mr Aravamudan forsaking his “steady job” at the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) to volunteer to join physicist Vikram Sarabhai’s nascent space effort. The story then continues to the US, where a bunch of young scientists find themselves thrust into the hurly-burly of the American space programme in the early 1960s to learn the art of assembling, firing and tracking small atmospheric research rockets. 

Although they are curious about what the Americans are up to in their race with the Soviets in reaching space milestones, they quickly discover that information is compartmentalised and the Americans have no interest in teaching them the cutting-edge developments in space technology. Thus was born the desire to have an independent space effort that is hoped will have similar capabilities in the future. 

The book is a lucid and joyful account of how young scientists like Messrs Aravamudan and Kalam then came back to India from the US and started on their baby steps to reach for the stars. If you remember another historic picture, it is of the scientists ferrying a small rocket on the back of a bicycle to its launch station in Thumba, in Kerala. You get a fascinating insight into that picture and all the other typical Indian innovations, colloquially called jugaad, which went into ISRO, which is today dreaming of a manned space mission in the not too distant future.

The ISRO story is indeed very curious for the fact that a very cash-strapped Indian government, which has always lagged in fundamental human development priorities, indulged these young enthusiastic scientists in essentially what was the longest moonshot. And in a country where, almost always, government efforts tend to drag on interminably, these scientists delivered in spades, mostly keeping to very strict deadlines. Thus, it is important that people like Mr Aravamudan tell the story of how they did it, and it is impressive that he kept a record of events through all those years.

Though the book is an interesting read about the formation of ISRO, it does leave one with an empty feeling. This is a biography of the organisation from the perspective of Mr Aravamudan. What one would have loved to read would have been his personal views on this story. There are some questions to which you feel you need answers. There is no mention of whether the scientists ever debated prioritising a space programme when there were pressing human development priorities in the country. This question is debated even today whenever there is a launch by ISRO. 

Then, there is the curious case of Kalam, the author’s dearest friend with whom he enjoyed a long personal relationship. Kalam left ISRO while the head of its rocket programme to head the ballistic missile programme for the military. While ISRO has prided itself for being a non-military space agency, it has always been spoken about in hushed corridors about how key personnel left with their knowledge to start a missile programme. Mr Aravamudan steers clear of this and many other controversies, which ends up making this another plain vanilla – or would it be more apt to say curd rice – version of the story of ISRO.