From tiny outhouse to the Moon: How this 'Rocket Boy' put India on the space map
Vikram Sarabhai to India's first privately made rocket Vikram-S, which was launched last year by Hyderabad-based startup Skyroot Aerospace, to the Vikram lander, all these milestones of India's space journey bear the name of the man who put India on the space map. India's moonshot, and indeed its whole sprawling space programme, had begun at an unlikely place.
A dream was born in a tiny outhouse Just as many immensely successful tech companies such as Microsoft started out from garages, India's space programme too had humble beginnings.
India's space programme was born from an outhouse of the Retreat Bungalow in Shahibaugh, Ahmedabad, which belonged to Sarabhai, who belonged to a prominent industrialist family and had returned to work in India after his PhD at Cambridge University.
It was Sarabhai's laboratory-cum-office where this great scientist worked. It was here that two pioneering institutes — the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) — were conceptualised in 1945.
Sarabhai spent long hours for nearly two years at this outhouse blowing glass to make Geiger counters for studying cosmic rays and their varying intensities, along with some of his students.
On November 11, 1947 with the support of Kasturbhai Lalbhai, Ahmedabad Education Society, Karmashetra Educational Foundation, Gujarat government and a small fund from Atomic Energy Commission, the PRL shifted out of Retreat Bungalow to a laboratory in MG Science College.
Sarabhai would frequent Dr KR Ramanthan's meteorological laboratory in Pune and another laboratory in Gulmarg for his cosmic ray studies. In 1947, Sarabhai invited Dr Ramanathan to be the first director of PRL after his retirement.
The making of Sarabhai
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