UNIT 4 WINGS OF FIRE(13-16)

UNIT 4 WINGS OF FIRE 13-16

Kalam received Wernher Von Braun and brought him to Trivandrum from Madras in the Avro aircraft. Everybody working in rocketry knows Von Braun as father of modern rocketry. He made the lethal V-2 missiles that devastated London in World War II. In the final stages of the war he was captured by the allied forces and was given a top position in the rocketry programme of NASA. There he produced ‘Jupiter’ missile, which was the first IRBM with a 3,000 Km range.
The V-2 missile was the culmination of the efforts of Von Braun and his team in the VFR, a society for Space Flight in Germany in 1920s. Later Von Braun became the technical director of the German Missile Laboratory at Kummersdorf. The first test of V-2 missile was a failure as it toppled over and exploded. But on 16th August 1942, it became the first missile to exceed the speed of sound.
Kalam was excited to travel with Von Braun - a scientist, designer, production engineer, administrator and technology manager, all rolled into one. One can never expect such a great person to be so humble, receptive and encouraging. He became a cult figure in America after creating the ‘Saturn’ rocket in the Apollo mission, which took man to the moon.
Von Braun encouraged Kalam to continue SLV-3 project as it is a genuine Indian Design. He told him that one does not build on successes but also on failures. Apart from hard work to reach targets, one should have a vision. This makes all the difference. He also advised him not to make rocketry his profession or livelihood but to make it his religion, his mission. In this way, Von Braun resembled Prof. Vikram Sarabhai.
With three deaths in the family the only way he found to come out of the grief was commitment to his work. According to Kalam Total Commitment is the common denominator among all successful men and women. With commitment to work, one also needs good health and boundless energy.
FLOW, Kalam says, is an overwhelming and joyous experience while working. It is a sensation we experience when we act with total involvement. During flow action follows action according to an internal logic, where conscious intervention of the worker is not required. One involves and carries out one’s work with concentration. Here the distinction between the self and the activity disappears. In such state people feel relaxed, energetic and fresh. The first requirement to get into that state of flow is the availability of a significant span of uninterrupted time. It is difficult to switch into flow state in less than half an hour. It is impossible if one gets disturbed frequently.
The first experimental flight of SLV-3 was scheduled on 10th August 1979. The goals of the mission were to realize a fully integrated launch vehicle and to evaluate on-board systems as well as the ground system. The 23 meter long, four-stage SLV rocket, weighing 17 tones, finally took off elegantly at 7:58 AM and immediately started following its programmed trajectory.
Stage-I performed well and there was a smooth transition from stage I to Stage II. But suddenly stage II went out of control and the flight was terminated after 317 seconds. The remains of the vehicle including stages III & IV crashed into the sea. This incident caused profound disappointment to Kalam and his team. Kalam relived each one of those set backs in his career– the premature death of NANDI, the abandoning of the RATO and the abortion of the Diamont’s fourth stage. Later they analysed the reasons in the review meeting and found that there was a problem in the control system of stage II. Kalam shouldered the responsibility for SLV-3’S failure.
In the second attempt that is in the early hours of 18th July 1980, India’s first satellite launch vehicle, SLV-3 lifted off from SHAR. The whole nation was excited. India became one among the nations which possessed satellite launch capability. It was both the culmination of the national dream and the beginning of a very important phase in our nation’s history.
Now that SLV-3 had been successfully launched, VSSC had to re- organise its resources and redefine its goals. SLV-3 continuation project aimed at making operational satellite launch vehicles of similar class. It envisaged the development of Augmented Satellite launch vehicle (ASLV), a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) in the future. The infrastructure of VSSC was inadequate to start all these projects. New sites were identified for the expanded activities of VSSC at Vaatiyoorkavu and Valiamala. Fresh planning and analysis, especially of facilities started. It paved the way for re-entry experiments, which later on became Agni.
Prof. Raja Ramana, the renowned nuclear scientist and the scientific adviser to the defense minister asked Kalam to join DRDL and to take up the responsibility of shaping the guided missile development programme.(GMDP). Kalam had been at ISRO for eighteen years and it was great pain for him to leave ISRO. He became the focus of the media with the success in SLV-3 project. He was conferred with the prestigious ‘Padma Bhushan award, which made his close associate turn envious.

M PAVAN SURYA