Trail Blazers: Vikram Sarabhai

            Sarabhai was a creative scientist, a successful and forward-looking industrialist, an innovator of the highest order, a great institution builder, and an educationist with a difference, a connoisseur of arts, an entrepreneur of social change, a pioneering management educator and more.      

               Sarabhai’s name will remain inseparable from India’s space programme. Sarabhai put India on the international map in the field of space research. Then he made equally pioneering contributions in other fields. He worked in the fields of textiles, pharmaceuticals, nuclear power, electronics and many others incessantly until last.

             Sarabhai had realized the enormous potentialities inherent in space science and technology for a wide range of social and economic development activities communication, meteorology , weather forecasting, and exploration for natural resources, to name only a few. The Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, established by Sarabhai pioneered research in space sciences and subsequently in space technology. Sarabhai also spearheaded the country’s rocket technology. He played a pioneering role in the development of satellite TV broadcasting in India.

         In the early 1980s VSSC was instrumental in the development of India’s Satellite launch vehicle program, SLV-3. This was followed in the last 1980s with the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV), for launching 150 kg satellites into near earth orbits. Major Programmes of VSSC include the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), Rohini Sounding Rockets, space Capsule Recovery experiment, Reusable Launch Vehicles and Air Breathing Propulsion.

        The most striking aspect of Sarabhai’s personality was the range and breadth of his interests and the way in which he transformed his ideas institutions.