By now, many people have already heard about the Mars Orbiter Mission. Mangalyaan was the countrys first attempt to a send a mission to the Red Planet, and it was completed on a very low budget. But did you know that India has also developed the fastest supersonic cruise missile? The BrahMos (named for two rivers, the Brahmaputra in India and the Moskva in Russia) was born out of a joint venture between the two countries and is said to be three times faster than subsonic missiles such as the Tomahawks. Did you know that India also pioneered the worlds first war rocket way back in the 1790s? When the American national anthem tells about the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air, it refers to none other than this Indian rocket, which the British took from Tipu Sultan, the king of Mysore, after his defeat. The British improved upon it and used it against Napoleon and the American colonists. Incidentally, two of these rockets are displayed in the Royal Artillery Museum in London. Or did you know that the theory of gravity was explained by the Indian mathematician and astronomer Bhaskaracharya (1114-1184) about 500 years before Isaac Newton came up with it? In the Surya Siddhant, he makes this note on the force of gravity: Objects fall on earth due to a force of attraction by the earth. Therefore, the earth, planets, constellations, moon and sun are held in orbit due to this attraction. Well, the Mangalyaan mission has certainly carved a distinguished spot for the nation in the global space/technology community. But so have several others, says Sivathanu Pillai, the main architect for the BrahMos missile and a member of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) team that launched the Mangalyaan. He spoke to EE Times about the lesser-known Indian space odyssey that began in the 1980s. Walk down memory lane :: Hailing from the southern Indian town Nagercoil, Pillai traces his journey back to being a hard-working kid at school. In addition to attending school, he helped his mother sell milk, and he went on evening rounds to collect the money. In school, he scored 100 per cent in math on his way to becoming an outstanding student in his electrical engineering course. When I was a student at an engineering college in Madurai, another small town in southern India, Dr. Vikram Sarabai, considered to be the pioneer of Indian space programmes, visited the students exhibition at the Indian Science Congress where we had participated, Pillai said. He appreciated the work I did and gave me a hug and said I was a bright boy and would have a great future. The experiment we had showcased was an electrical time switch which can be programmed to operate multiple gadgets during the time required. In 1968, that concept was just not there. This led to Pillai joining the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), where he was part of a committee led by Sarabai to develop a space programme for India. This helped me to develop a vision and far-sightedness for our country. Later we submitted the report, which was approved by the government. This was the beginning of how India would embark on the space programme and develop communication and remote sensing satellites and use these for the benefit of the common man. Pillai later worked with Abdul Kalam on the development of Indias first satellite launch vehicle (the SLV-3) and worked on stage (rocket) motors. That greatly helped me in technology-oriented management to oversee product engineering. We successfully completed SLV-3 in 1980 and later moved to the design team of PSLV [the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle], which is operational now and was instrumental in recently placing the Mars Orbiter Mission. Success of BrahMos :: When we developed the missiles, we were under the Missile Technology Control Regime, Pillai said. All the leading countries were not supporting us with any technology or component or materials. So we decided to develop everything in India. A supercomputer was refused to us, and we made it. We needed materials for re-entry technology, which was also not given to us, but we developed them, too. Everybody was astonished as to how India was able to develop all these on its own. Thats when the talk of collaboration started, and one of the first few countries to approach us was Russia. Many people were against this. In the early 1990s, the Soviet Union had broken up, and the economic situation in Russia was in a decline. But I was convinced it would be a great success because of what I had learned from scientific visionaries like Dr. Sarabai, Prof. Satish Dhawan and Dr. Kalam. Today, BrahMos is one of the best examples of Indian technological capability. Subsonic missiles like Tomahawks take time to reach [their target] and give the enemy time to react. Supersonic missiles like BrahMos take just about one third of the time of, say, a Tomahawk. The second most important point which differentiates BrahMos is its kinetic energy, which is nine times more powerful. And third is its extreme precision capability. When asked why the United States or other countries could not develop this, he said the missile needs a supersonic engine, which the Russians developed first. The Americans had locked on to the Tomahawk platform and have produced thousands of Tomahawk missiles. Now to change any other technology requires trillions of dollars to change or replace the engines. You can only improve the software, guidance and such things, but if you need to change the engine, it involves enormous time, money and effort to do a new configuration. It would basically be a new missile/engine which has to be developed and deployed. Looking towards the future :: BrahMos missiles are installed in almost all the Indian Navy ships and several regiments of the army, and they undergo upgrades every year. There are different versions, and today we are in the process of making the fourth version, Pillai said. We have also started work on the hypersonic programme, where we are looking at wanting to move from a speed of Mach 3 to Mach 7. A couple of countries have worked on hypersonic and have done flight tests, but they have failed, and there is a move to stop their work on hypersonic projects. But we are steadily working towards it. India has come a long way from the 1990s, when it started this unique joint venture with Russia. There are several strategic friendship agreements relating to defence, including those with the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Israel. What we have done is to create a role model with BrahMos. Now, instead of buying astronomically high-priced defence equipment, if we can develop technology through collaboration, we would be taking a big step to improvement. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis recent visit to the United States has just reinforced these collaborations in defence, science and technology. The one subject that was the talking point in all the interactions, from President Obama to U.S. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, was pure technology. Incidentally, after the Modis visit, the two countries are expected to sign an agreement on launching a joint radar satellite mission, among other initiatives related to energy, manufacturing, health and education that are opening new opportunities for partnership.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 04:30:06 +0000
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