From a small fishing village to Mars, pioneers saw future

[noksss]

Old-timers in Thumba, a sleepy fishing village near Thiruvananthapuram, remember a bunch of people who had made St Magdalene Church their home and workplace in the late 1960s. They would stroll on the beach, with a handsome young man in kurta-pyjama telling them how to dream. Occasionally they would fire a rocket that would go up to 60km and fall into the Arabian Sea.

Today's residents of Thumba may not know that the man in kurta-pyjama was Vikram Sarabhai, and his bunch of young scientists included A P J Abdul Kalam, R Aravamudan, B Ramakrishna Rao, D Eswar Das, M R Kurup, M G Mathur and S Nambinarayanan. They went on to deliver on Sarabhai's dream to make India a space-faring nation. The Indian Space Research Organisation's successful Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is a demonstration of how the next generation of scientists have made the country a space superpower.

"We owe it all to Sarabhai and his mentor Homi Bhabha," says former Isro chairman U R Rao. "They laid the foundation for India's space programme. They were convinced that one day India would make it big in space."

It may not be incidental that India's space programme came out of its atomic energy programme that Bhabha and Sarabhai helped establish, but Sarabhai was clear that space science should have societal applications.



"When remote sensing was unheard of in the country, Sarabhai got us to get into a helicopter and record visuals of wilting coconut trees in Trivandrum. He showed it to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and told her, 'See, a satellite picture can show you much more about agriculture.' He convinced her," Rao recollects.

Nambinarayanan, who pioneered India's liquid propulsion system that is now at the core of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket system, says Sarabhai didn't have to try push hard with the Prime Minister to get the nod for space projects.

"Indira Gandhi had great faith in Sarabhai and would readily make allocations for whatever he asked," Nambinarayanan says. "Sarabhai, born in an aristocratic Gujarati family of businessmen, had no interest in money and dedicated himself to make India go places in space."

Bhabha, a nuclear physicist, found in Sarabhai, an astrophysicist, his successor in both the country's atomic energy and space programmes, but told Sarabhai to give space research priority. Both were educated abroad and had left lucrative job offers to set up great institutions in India. Bhabha founded Tata Institute of Fundamental Research; Sarabhai was the architect of Physical Research Laboratory, the frontrunner of all space labs in India.

Homi Bhabha (Getty Images)

Bhabha and Sarabhai both died young and at the peak of their careers — Bhabha at 57, in a plane crash near Mont Blanc on the Italy-France border in 1966; Sarabhai at 52, found dead in a hotel room in Kovalam in 1971.

"I am happy that the new generation would have made the founding fathers proud," says Rao. "Sarabhai led you like a friend, not a boss. And that will be the way forward for Isro and India."

From a small fishing village to Mars, pioneers saw future - The Times of India

 

[Astra-2013]

"Sarabhai, born in an aristocratic Gujarati family of businessmen, had no interest in money and dedicated himself to make India go places in space."

Sarabhai was also a Gujju.
Yesterday some Southies were boasting in MOM thread, that most scientists and chairman of isro are from South india.
Lekin BAAP to hemesha Northies hi rahenge.
@Ravi Nair @acetophenol


***Just joking.....Dont take it on serious note

 

[axisofevil]

There are a bunch of smart scientists all over India. The difference? The two mentioned above had rich resources whereas the Southies had peanuts to make their dreams come true. It takes a certain caliber and personality to get ahead when you are poor.

There is a big conspiracy theory behind some of the deaths of Indian scientists. On 10th January 1966 Lal Bahadur Shashtri died in Tashkent due to heart attack but no medical inquiry was conducted to ascertain the cause of his death. But his wife said that he was poisoned. Raising doubts about the dark blue spots and cut marks on the abdomen of his father's body after his death in 1966, Shashtri's son Sunil asked how the cut marks appeared, if a post-mortem was not conducted.

Many theories float around regarding his death. At Tashkent Shashtri was meeting Pakistan General Ayub Khan to sign a peace treaty after the 1965 war and Shastri insisted on adding the assurance, "never again will weapons be used to sort out problems between India and Pakistan." Ayub finally wrote it at the very last moment. General Ayub's handwritten assurance is still preserved in the Indian archives. Shastri was a slight person but with a strong mind.

The PMO has agreed that there is a classified document regarding the investigation into his death but two RTI applications to declassify and make it public have been rejected with reasons like, exemption, International Relations might be hampered, Parliamentary privileges may be hampered, etc. Till today no one has come to any conclusion about the death of our ex PM Lal Bahudur Shashtri

If that happened on 10th January, then exactly 14 days later, on 24th January 1966 an Air India flight 101, a Boeing 707 plane, from Bombay to London crashed near Mont Blanc, in the alps. One of its passenger was Homi Jehangir Bhabha, who was on his way to Vienna to attend IAEA conference but was killed instead in the crash. Captain of the Air India Boeing 707, who was one of the airline's most experienced pilots, had told the control tower a few minutes earlier to report that his instruments were working fine and the aircraft was flying at 19,000ft (5,791 metres)- at least 3,000ft (514 metres) higher than the Mont Blanc summit. Shortly after, the plane crashed into the mountain.

Bhabha is generally acknowledged as the father of Indian nuclear power. Moreover, he is credited with formulating the country's strategy in the field of nuclear power to focus on extracting power from the country's vast thorium reserves rather than its meagre uranium reserves. This vision is very crucial for India to establish itself as a leading researcher in thorium based power generation. But his death set us back and we have turned to Uranium. There is a separate conspiracy about thorium which can be seen in this video below



Bhabha was a genius and he could have done wonders if he were alive. The most widely accepted theory behind his death is that it was done by CIA. Of course, the Scientists at that time knew they were being watched by angents from both USA and Russia. But the interview of a certian Robert Crowley from CIA puts light on how it was in their interest to get rid of Bhabha and Shashtri.

TBR News August 14, 2010

The authenticity of such a document is not 100% as we are in the conspiracy world. but deaths of two most important people for India and that too in so close a proximity cannot just be a co-incidence.

Then of course is the Mysterious death of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai. Death came to Vikram Sarabhai in a quiet room of his favourite resort on Kovalam beach after he had witnessed firing of a Russian rocket and inaugurated Thumba railway station to retire for the night. He did not die in a plane crash. Here too there was no scientific enquiry into his death.

Amrita Shah, in her book Vikram Sarabhai - a life' mentions about murmurs of international foul plady'. Kamla Chaudhary, a close associate of Vikrambhai at IIM-A is quoted saying, "Vikram had told me that he was being watched by both Americans and Russians."

Truth about these events may never be known. But recently the research has been started again into thorium based reactors and most countries are developing them. Of course, India perhaps is the only country in the world with a detailed, funded, government-approved plan to focus on thorium-based nuclear power. But we are way behind, decades due to the death of these amazing visionaries.

 

[Jai_Hind]

"Sarabhai, born in an aristocratic Gujarati family of businessmen, had no interest in money and dedicated himself to make India go places in space."

Sarabhai was also a Gujju.
Yesterday some Southies were boasting in MOM thread, that most scientists and chairman of isro are from South india.
Lekin BAAP to hemesha Northies hi rahenge.
@Ravi Nair @acetophenol

Common bhai, international forum he, aisi bate mat kiya kar yar... Sare Indians he, wahi kafi he

 

[Astra-2013]

Common bhai, international forum he, aisi bate mat kiya kar yar... Sare Indians he, wahi kafi he

Me koi serious todi hi tha. i was just doing some "GudGudi to Southies".
Btw are u from South.

 

[Jai_Hind]

Me koi serious todi hi tha. i was just doing some "GudGudi to Southies".
Btw are u from South.

OK...

nah, I am assamese and bengali mixed in a ratio of 1:1....

 

[kodandarama]

All three were assassinated. Lal Bahadur Shastri and Homi Bhaba by the CIA.

Vikram Sarabhai's assassination suspect could be both KGB or CIA, but CIA is more likely. He died of an "heart Attack" though he had no history of heart problems and had a healthy lifestyle which included no smoking or drinking and regular exercise including swimming.

There were reports of two Kerala girls going into his room on that fateful night, in Hotel beach castle in Kovalam beach. The presence of these two christian women were know to all the waiters in the hotel. Waiters have seen these two women coming out of his room and the whole issue was hushed up.Vikram Sarabhai had no history of heart problems and his medical records at DAE was as clean as a clean slate.

In such deaths, the post-mortem was a mandatory thing but, K. Karunakaran who was the home minister of Kerala, insisted that there should not be a post mortem either in Kerala or in Ahmadabad. Strangely Karunakaran flew with the body of Sarabhai to Ahmadabad to make sure that there was no post mortem.

Back in those days the CIA was actively involved in funded and removed the first elected communist government in Kerala that was later confirmed as per the book written by an ex US Ambassador to India.

Such is the story of India.

The connection of CIA in easing out the Communist Government has been a subject of great controversy ever since 1959. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the American Ambassador to India, has mentioned CIA's role in the process. The financial help it received from the Central Intelligence Agency of the United State increased the intensity of the firepower of this agitation against the government.

From Wikipedia - CIA_activities_in_India#India_1969-1974

"In 1985, according to Frontline magazine, RAW counter-intelligence obtained a confession, from a field officer in Chennai to admit that he had passed on sensitive information to the CIA and Sri Lankan intelligence. RAW confronted him with footage showing him making contact with a U.S. national on a beach in Chennai and at a resort in Kerala. RAW had sought to tighten in-house security after the public fracas that broke out in the wake of the scandal. The Chennai case was a particular embarrassment because it came hot on the heels of another spy scandal involving French and Polish intelligence."