 of finance or something like that. And then there's a bunch of people from the soul and I went through an interview process. And of course it was attractive that the opportunity of job in Bangalore, I think one of the reasons why they moved here was that Bangalore was a home country and I thought it's a good thing to do in the shop. So I was planning on a career which was, you know, to join this job for a couple of years, maybe worth a couple of years. In those days the World Bank was something that we all wanted to do. It was an ultimate in terms of what you wanted to do in terms of money, reward and all that. So I said that's the kind of plan I had and I came in and started working. Then you know, once you start getting into this new, you are so engaged with it as we went along and we were doing all these fantastic things. I think I was 26 years or 27 years old when I went to the United Nations for the first time. And here was this guy with absolutely no background or anything on the international scene who was talking on behalf of the country on what was going on in outer space. So there was a treaty being negotiated and you are the same. So there was a kind of very, what I called, it was one of those great times in life where the opportunity space for doing a lot of things was worth doing. And as I said, I was lucky that I joined the show and I was also very lucky because it had to have the governance. So what I'm going to talk to you about today is one of the facets of the Indian space. It's a limited part. It's an important part of a limited part. I think there are other facets that are equally fascinating. Of course, being the position I was in, one soft bits of it, a little bit of all of it. So the large vehicle story is also an extremely interesting story. It's got a lot of internal and external issues. The girl in the story itself has worked with the PhD students. The INSAT program and the associated issues that are especially getting the user agency on board and all the kinds of politics and internal and external that shaped it and looked it in a particular way is also another fantastic story. How the geopolitical and the international scene kind of affected the program in different places. In the early days it was very, very comfortable and as we became more and more successful it gets into more and more problems. So some of those issues are worth looking at in different parts. So I'm going to limit myself only to this because I don't think we can cover much more than the kind of time frame. The other thing I want to tell you is I'm going to give you a kind of narrative. I assume that some of you are familiar. I'll give you a little bit of the technical aspect of space because that is important to understand. I'll try to spend more time on the organization and the definitions. If you have any questions at any time please feel free to ask. We can have a discussion rather than a moral argument. Just to give you a kind of perspective when I joined the space program in 74 Mascara was not there. Aryabhata was not there in 1975 and immediately after the launch of Aryabhata we had to decide on what we wanted to do on the side. So the obvious choice that you make is can I do something to Aryabhata with some incremental change that would enable me to do something better. After a lot of discussion I have a Kaviko Manikarajan who is actually involved in a lot of those discussions. He is writing up all his, he has a lot of papers that he, he was possibly the closest to Prasadavan and he had to correspond with him and all that stuff. So he is writing up all that stuff and he will soon make it available to him. So the consensus with that time was that we would try and do some incremental improvements to Aryabhata to launch a Mascara side. And already both Vikram Sarabhai and Prasadavan were convinced that remote sensing had a great potential to look at the development of issues So Aryabhata and Mascara the successor to Aryabhata was designed as a remote sensing satellite. There were a lot of changes that had to be made especially in the attitude of the industry system because even though it was spinning satellite we had to look down the earth with the camera system. So we decided to buy a TV camera system from a plot or by parts of a TV camera system to put it together and launch and that was the Mascara side. It had a resolution of 1 km and it was launched in 1979. In 1995, it was so launched IRS on sale. It had a 5 meter resolution. So in 16 years this was moved from being what I call, I remember going to NASA for making a presentation. So I was talking to them about Mascara and I put up this number saying resolution 1000 meters so that people say you got your number wrong because the meter is there. You guys are way behind me. But in 16 years we actually moved from being a novice and between 1995 and 2000 this was my father's satellite and I think the highest satellite resolution was the Mascara. So in the 16 year period we moved from what I call purely backward to being a fun camera. Obviously, one of the questions we used to ask ourselves in the kind of research we had done on this after a long time is how did this happen? Can we add one more question to that? What happened over the next 16 years because now we are in 2017 and more 16 or 20 years have passed since. I will talk a little bit about the end. The report that we have on that which I will make available as a complete thing till about maybe 2005. Satish Devan is the person that I think in a sense you can argue was largely instrumental in waiting this time. When I joined space we had a very clear idea that you wanted to combine management system level. In so one thing you must understand everybody looks at system management. So we always look at problems in the system. So one of the things that people use easily is the word ecosystem. Everything is in ecosystem. But this actually lived in this. So we actually pioneered a lot of this and we wanted to put together a combination of technical knowledge and management. One of the reasons why I joined is I had an engineering degree at that time. So it so happened that this one had this particular culture. By the time I left this one I was doing largely on technology issues. And I was consulted on all technology issues. My colleagues who had actually been technology developers they became consultants on management structure, organization, and so on. So you know this kind of mixing and moving in order kind of mentally of capabilities for the development of technology. So at that time we were a group of about 10 to 12 people. We were called the systems programming and analysis group. And our job was basically to help us understand what kind of development to help with the operational part of what we were doing on health projects. Basically to create a strategy where we would actually make space relevant for the development of the vehicle because I don't have to tell you very much about the fantastic engineer to do anything with his hands. I'm an engineer but I can't do anything that he could do. He could actually fix a switch fix his own switch or a slide project event to operate and he would come and fix it himself. He spent a lot of time in the HL workshop. So he had a great activation for people, craftsmen who can actually do things. He was also the director of the Institute of Science. He created an entire aerospace which kind of emphasized this craftsman's love of tinkering with the vehicles. After he retired, he became a major, he wanted to understand how birds fly. He was an aerodynamic aerodynamicist and he wanted to look at how birds fly. And he spent a lot of time on his birds and he had a fantastic talk with people and aerodynamic principles and the end of the talk was of course to do all these technical things because you can still go and understand how birds fly. And he was always a person, I've talked to him many times he was always a great admirer of the craftsman. I never met Sarabha at the IHG. I heard him talk when I was in the IHG he came and spoke about the space program very inspiring. But he was one guy who had a great respect for the craftsman. Almost any time, even in the final interview that I had with him, he was talking about Victor's great craftsman. More than anything else, we would deal with him at the personal level. He was a great, you know, at one level professional, but at another level he was very, very humane and warm and for example, I remember once we had to go to Russia and I was Soviet Union. I was going with him and somehow somebody had messed up the accommodation. So there was an accommodation reserved for him, that was nothing for me. And here was Sam and there was a minister of state level so we had to give him all kinds of things. He said, Chandra why don't worry about it you can come and stay with me. Fantastic person and of course we all learnt whatever I wrote today is largely a concept. So coming back to the IRS thing just to give you an idea of what is the meaning of this remote sensing it's a very simple concept. Sun is a source of radiation. It falls on the earth, objects on the earth reflect that radiation. You put a camera on the satellite first they are going to cover a very large field. And the other thing you can do is you know radiation comes in different waves so you can split the radiation and you can filter the parts So that forms original ideas it used to be a film but the film is an analogue system it has a lot of issues early reconnaissance and then they were replaced by discrete digital detectors and then I'm going to talk about CCD they are kind of semiconductor based array detectors. So each of them has a difference so it splits that wavelength and then you measure that wavelength and the current sent to the digital information either via a satellite or directly in the ground and you process it convert it either to a film or a picture or you convert it to use a computer to do these simple tasks So that's really what the satellite is supposed to be And the trigger for all of the story of 16 years of leadership was actually immediately after the Baskara project was initiated this was already looking ahead as to what they had to do So the government initiated a number of preliminary studies on what kind of a satellite was needed to meet India's needs We had narrowed down on remote sensing as one of the key versions of the country And if at all any one event can be figured out as a trigger for achieving global leadership it was a setting up of a committee chaired by a scientist from SAIC Dr. T. A. Hariharanam who has had known that he was an application scientist who had come to visit for NASA and he was the person who actually chaired this project What is that? Sartre Space Application Center I'm a topologist I always get into this history So let me try and give you a little bit of how this was authorized in those days and maybe even today it's my comment that we need to build satellites because we choose to be the the only other top product that we recently became a center So that center is largely responsible for the the power of the control the sensors that are needed for achieving control All the electronics, the telemetry all that stuff is built in the satellites Now the the satellite has to carry a payload Normally an application payload can be a communication transponder or it can be a camera type of systems product that is built by the space application center So that's the other part We need a launcher to launch the satellite The launcher is normally done at Vikram Sahara Space Center The liquid part is now done in a place called the liquid propellant So liquid rockets are built in one center, solid rockets The system engineering is done in Vikram Sahara So that's built in We need to launch it from a particular So it also has a lot of these test phases You need to test the rocket motors You also need to process propellants and do a lot of stuff So some of those facilities are potentially working Now data from satellites, remote sensing satellites are received at the national remote sensing agency So they receive the data process the data and give it to the users That's broad lately Just to pick on something that you just mentioned liquid rockets and solid rockets When you say liquid rockets are you talking about the fuel for the rocket? The fuel is liquid They are called hypergolic So you take nitric acid and unsympathetic You put them together Explode So controlled explosion is water Solid means you are casting a solid It's like a plastic You mix it up in a bread The apparatus that you make for making solid propellants is actually a bread kneader You knead it like bread So it floats So you do that and then you cast it into a vacuum And then you cure it under certain conditions and then you add the solid rocket And after that you attach the nozzle So in a sense you can argue it's a lot of plastic Solid rockets are a lot of plastic Liquid rockets are dangerous chemicals Except for liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen which also have the cryogenic engine Cryogenic engine has the advantage that for the fuel weight it has the best use One of the reasons why people use it is because it's difficult to use but it's a constant solution Sir, I have a question Sometime although I read during the formation of this there were a lot of social scientists and anthropologists and all this community of people who actually were used because they knew the social problems in the country So let me come back and share with you my own experiences about this It's a very interesting thing that you talk about And I told this for one of the great things that we were talking about Inside for example the concept of the concept itself came about the concept of satellite television So the Americans were very very receptive to the idea and so we came up with this fantastic experiment called the satellite instruction on the vision principle People know Kiran Karne Kiran Karne was one of the leading lights in that project One of the things in that project was that it combined the hardware of the satellite along with the reception capabilities where you needed TV sets to go to the village in which it functions You also needed the education software I think we were unhappy with some of the education software Let me also repeat the education system in the country is not particularly key in moving satellite technology to promote education People like me who had come from outside and saw this thing So we thought the education technology on the satellite TV for education can completely transform So one of the myths we all grew up with here we were all there desperately being able to do something and the country is desperately waiting for all of us to come up with this fantastic technology so that we can change it This is the kind of universal thing that all of us we were young maybe we didn't have any realistic assessment of what we were used to and we believed we were going to change it As I said when you look down now and we look at the inside so when we conceptualize inside one of the things that was emphasized again and again in the case unfortunately if you go back and look at the time even when I was asked after the telecom ministry didn't want the communications there is a written letter from the secretary of the telecom which I have seen except the telecom or telecommunications ministry does not see any future for telecommunications Was there any justification that they gave? I tend to believe that they believed that they were doing the best thing as far as they were concerned they were not prepared to look at it the other problem is also in the government department you are looking at power and control power gains of the key So sir a lot of red tape in one all ministries in the government of India including ISRO now we have lot of problems one of the things as I said organizations grow a lot of vested interests you want to protect yourself and see I don't know whether you are familiar with this principle related problem in the case of government departments the principle is the government of India India as a country the agents are the secretaries of the agents are very different from me because in exactly like a company you have a company that is run by managers and the owners are the shareholders will the managers do what is required by the shareholders or will they do what is the typical problem in business also so these kind of issues are there one of the great things that Dawal did in my opinion was actually narrated through this and being able to take this thing so we spent a lot of a lot of money on this all these loans to IRS itself we must have made about 20 or 25 presentations and we used to do extensive preparation so Dawal will insist that we have everything lined up the organization structure the people all the entities under that what kind of problems they have and about sensing health some experimental data to do actually used to do a lot of application things make it available to them a lot of work but it paid off because I think many of them so one of the things that we talk about is today when INSIDE was launched they used to provide a half an hour's draught between 12 and 12.30 for education best of the staff all the way they covered it completely I went to IIM and we are trying to use education TV I don't know whether education TV is now the answer to I think the education problem can be fixed only in combined technology with a person teacher to student with an account so it's not a rigid TV substituting of living teachers or teachers are using TV you should kind of like a lot of India's problems in education we talk a lot so we have an education satellite which is there one person is going to get enough to do our whole satellite but I don't see it as being used in the way it should be used because one education is going on the people who teach go about it it's complicated there is no organized effort so that's the kind of thing that we talk about I think today you see the internet is a clear substitute for something the internet connectivity is there you want to do any kind of real-time streaming or anything that you want to do on education the internet is available in those years we didn't have the internet so it was a potential substitute but it never took off what took off was commercial TV broadcasting became commercial education always took a back seat somewhere down the line we didn't have even a presence so the idea of what we had and how we would finally find out is very different today the space program can be justified on the basis of communication with TV but it's an economic justification not a development so you said about commercial and educational applications what about defence back then let me tell you the difference story we tried to desperately sell remote sensing again the government took a lot of initiative he was against space being used for military it was clearly Vikram Sattabhari he didn't model but in spite of it we involved them in a big way many of them came and spent some time in school again I come back the defence courses are very lot of inbuilt legitimities in their system they are not responsive to new ideas of change even today according to me now today for example the communication sector is a new thing and we look at remote sensing and reconnaissance and all that I used to consult I used to do a lot of work in this room now also in Nias and I spent some time with some of them I think they have made something they still don't know there are many many things that they do every time you go to them if you give them a 20 meter IRS data they'll say we need a 10 meter IRS you go with 10 meter they'll say we need a 5 meter now you go with 5 meter they'll say we need a 2 meter then you go with 2 meter they'll say we need a 50 meter the argument is this is not it's not a 0 1 gain with 10 meters you can do some you cannot do others with 5 meters you can do more and you need to build up a lot of capability different services nobody spends more than 2 years or 3 years for example photo interpretation for military if you want to look at the missile feature if you want to look at the uranium mill you need to spend time so I think the system level and I think military is still missing a strategic perspective in the world the Americans of course the Chinese are doing fantastic possibly the major competitors in the US and the United States India we are not even looking at the potential for example the Chinese have a system called Laogon they have 30 and they can track the ship in the Pacific Ocean they are just coming to the Chinese it's a Chinese GPS the Chinese are at system it's not one satellite so doesn't India also haven't they launched a bunch of satellites let me come back to the GPS the Indian GPS is geostationary and Indian geostationary the accuracy you will get is about 2GPS the GPS the American ultramarine version the accuracy you are going to get is better than a meat with high technology it can go even better but that's the secret version is about 10 to 5 meters with some help from the ground so they are acting and if you don't have these medium orbit integration I think the position vector so we need 4 different position vectors you know that if 2 vectors are almost the same very close to each other you cannot resolve the vectors very clear so obviously the Americans the American system is actually the best the Chinese are developed for the Indian system they are moved not to be little GPS the American standard GPS I feel no need to commercially complete I don't know whether you are familiar with network economics you know the incumbent or the guy with the maximum kind of market share network economic thing will ultimately get to know the Intel PC space so that's the kind of thing that the the Chinese are mind making the Americans the Europeans are also India is somewhere in between you are looking at the regional system for the different services but 20 meter or 10 meter is not good enough for example to use it for this island it might go for surveillance surveillance but commercial fixing up to some point is ok sure other point is with conventional GPS also you can manage commercial GPS is already there in India but the argument is that it's in the I mean it's controlled by the American government so he never know for security purposes I can understand but commercial applications China does have B2 right China has a B2 they have a 36 satellite configuration which consists over what about 27 Americans are 34 or 36 Russians have something similar Europeans also have something similar but you stated the disadvantage is the position vectors that you get in however fix the location are very close to each other ideally you want them to be so there's an inherent accuracy the critical thing is of course the crocs that they use Americans use CCM crocs they use rubidium there are some is it a cost factor that's limiting rubidium crocs are cheaper they are not as accurate they are not available they are malfunctioned in the recent satellites that's the rubidium crocs not the American CCM both the Chinese bought from and the Indian satellites the rubidium crocs are little lower in accuracy so they have to be more so the Japanese and the Russians are using the same rubidium or CCM the Russians may have their own system the Japanese may have access to American CCM crocs the Chinese are building them up they are building them up they have a company in China that does all they are also part of the Delirio project with the Europeans they had a company that was a lot of the stuff and the company finally I think the Chinese vanished and they started building their own system there are a lot of political geopolitics India is procuring the rubidium crocs from Europe same so the EU space program also uses rubidium is it? the EU sorry EU also uses rubidium they also have some access to CCM they have tapered rubidium they have CCM and some of them are not I don't remember exactly but I have it somewhere I have to check so one thing is for timing accuracy is important the configuration is also important much of the GPS improvement for commercial reasons comes also because you have a number of ground stations the positions are very well known and you kind of locate from that and then you improve the accuracy that's also happy with it John I am so sorry I am really used to the word traffic so let me come back to the IRS code so I at least feel free we can engage in all these diversions I don't have that many things to say so this is the report I managed to locate a copy of this report with great difficulty I actually authored it together I was the member secretary of this committee and this is the first report on what IRS report and it was actually done in 1976 the printed version came out in 40 years it's a long time I sometimes can't even believe that I don't start and just to give you an idea of how government thought about it what is the existing methods of resource data collection in the country few selected areas agriculture, hydrology, water management, land use, soil, forestry, oceanography geology from the above identify what earth resources can do and what should be the technical characteristics of such a satellite ground resolution, swath rapidity identify the sensor system we have not ruled out synthetic aperture or micro drug penetration IR optical and the kind of satellites that we would need we have to limit it down to a limited number of optional designs keeping in mind the total number of keeping the number of options to the minimum so at that time we had no idea what it would be so we put this number 300 to 400 kilocalories satellite then identify what needs to be done on the ground in order to look, acquire the data pre-processed, disseminated not only to India we also were thinking at that time of sending it to other democracies I will talk a little bit about what it did so you can see that it's a very broad coverage focused on the civilian applications not so much military and a lot of uncertainty about what is done but still we were clear what we wanted to do just to give an idea of the composition different centers I told you about it was chaired by Hariharan application so the focus of the work study was how to use it the society part of it image processing how to convert the data into images make it available to the user the microwave we had already microwave radiometers from Bhaskara synthetic apertures had great advantages because a lot of Indian agriculture happens during the monsoon period in clouds color so a lot of people used to say why we didn't want this optical stuff it's not who I am really value put a saw on it you can get their pictures my pictures we can use that be very useful during the monsoon period when the crop is actually starting right there was a GPS going I don't know whether it was going control engineer from the satellite center Aashya guy was involved in a lot of the TTC stuff they were also so they were members from the satellite center and of course my boss colleague Rajan major contributor to this whole space but I talk a little bit myself and another colleague of mine called R.G.Sharma were representing us so that one had this SPAG group as a kind of coordinator they had two projects operational project requirements and the needs of the projects to make sure they were defined was one kind of thing the other was to look ahead and plan for what kind of to come now if you go back and look at R.G.S. the reason why we achieved world leadership boils down to one single very important decision and that decision was instead of using the traditional discrete detectors which had been pioneered by DASA which were flying on the long side one and two models we came up with the idea of using a charge coupled device as a it looks like a very trivial technical problem but it has serious consequences in terms of what kind of a payload now this idea did not come from any great guy in one of the jobs in this record you are monitoring technology but if you want hands on experience you need to go to the people who have directly working on it no amount of book knowledge can replace the fact that people who are working on it know the inside out of you much as we would like to claim credit for the IRS and the system that the idea actually came from the which was headed by a very distinguished colleague of mine called Dr. Gnodz at the Amnibod space he created a group that was responsible for developing all the cameras and systems for the pilots to try to get help from the past class now CCT technology is very similar to CMOS technology what is the advantage of CMOS technology in every generation of detectors and explanations so when we started we were looking at a device about 128 I think maybe 2 IRS reached about 2 0 so one of the things that we had assumed that the moves lock and the evolution would also automatically look at it so by the time we started it was around that actually IRS I think had a detector array of 2 0 2 8 now they provide a superior alternative to the NASA Pioneer multi-spectrum technology and why was that I will talk a little bit about from the Indian view point agriculture in India is actually you can see that we are very small field sizes and within that field we grow more than what we come so the Indian requirements also dictated that a satellite had to be eventually able to have higher and higher mass innovations so these were some considerations that came up in the working world and therefore one of the reasons why all of us felt that this was a better choice than the scanner was we felt that a potential future for this development was started the other thing is with MSS technology it was not possible to improve the resolution because what happens is even Landsat 5 it had 128 discrete detectors 1 to 100 and if you wanted to go from 30 meters to 50 meters between 4 times you can't have you can't maintain the geometry so what are the problems with MSS technology there for us but it is not going to go beyond the limit of about 20 meters therefore we wanted to look at the future the CCD approach so the study team suggested that an IRS satellite could be built within about 300 to 4 meters and at that time we were already looking at PSLD as a launcher for the IRS so we needed to justify the logic of PSLD so we coupled it with this development the primary missions were agriculture land use forestry etc as was the government suggested the primary sensor was not the US at all so within the group there was a divide some people felt we shouldn't take the risk of going with the technology that I gave you other people felt we should look so the convergences we would fly on the first satellite the primary would be a land-side system we would also fly on the CCD camera as a backup question here how easy or difficult was it to actually convert technology transfer to such a very critical piece of convert technology for the satellite for the US, for NASA the CCD camera comprises several components some of those components can be bought some of them have to be built the main thing is to design it the CCD device was identified as a critical very critical item because without that the camera could not be built so one of the considerations that went into a lot of this debate was whether such devices would be built rather than MTCR work missile technology SLV was not set on site after that it became much more difficult but in this era it was not but difficult to get at least the experimental part but by the time IRS was approved in 1981, it already cost so one of the concerns that we had was whether you had to depend only on the resource there was an alternative French source also because the French were there they had also decided on the CCD so at that time there was a lot of debate so I still remember the procurement order there I think NASA had a slightly differential policy to space application what kind of laid the kind of relationship between the Indian and French agencies because today they are like working together and so many things and I think the relationship goes even farther than that you go back and look at see when I got this go, Viking technology which is the large technology which actually is actually used in the second stage of the SCD we have a team of these four engineers working with the French on that technology they needed people we provided them the people we also needed something from them they gave us some translations that are needed for monitoring the performance of the engine itself so we set up a facility here we made the translations along with we sent a lot of people about 150 engineers no, I don't think it is there a lot of it has moved out but at that time we had a dedicated potential so that in a sense represents that even prior to that the center of the French center of they built the first propellant plant in B.S.S.C. was set up to produce again the French team that would be very similar to the S.H. 200 what is the S.H. 200 the boosters of the B.S.200 no, that is like a that is like a what is it called that is like this bushy potash it is sounding like a it is not it scales out much bigger of course, B.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S we saw it rocket booster it was conceived now I think it was the second largest booster in the world people may not know I think the U.S. had a bigger one and then Arirang 5 when it came up built a slide to become one so it is so solid rocket boosters must be second or third maybe even one in the world today So, we went from what I call 300 millimeter diet or something like 2.5 or 4 meters, whatever is the number, it is a huge slide. So, one of the greatness of the store was we had a pilot plant, not even a pilot plant, we had a laboratory demonstration of all this. And we took the risk and said we would put, for example, the total and choice for PSMB was between what NASA was using, right, which was something called, remember, we had But we pioneered HTPB with HTPB as compared to what NASA was using. Yeah, because So, HTPB was actually the one that our people wanted. Yeah, 90 percent. And we had only a laboratory level demonstration. We had one whole day meeting in Bangalore and we decided that we would go with HTP. Yeah, I think today is still… PPN, polybutadiene acrylonitrile was the object. So, between PPN and… At that time, nobody else was using that, I think. NASA pioneered PPN. The French thing was even earlier. Centaur used polyurethane or not even polyvinylchlor, PBC, polyvinylchlor. So, we graduated. So, I don't know whether any of you know a guy called Dr. Gowalitri. One of those… Again, one of those great people, visionary. So, he was looking at these huge rockets. Sprout, for example, the focal length of those rockets. So, he was looking at 10 years and 15 years ago. So, he built up… We have this fantastic capability in solid rockets. Very, very good. And BSEC, which is really a fantastic technology in Centaur. Very, very good. It's built up step by step. Very, very good. And I joined at that time. So, ammonium pochloride, we indigenized. All the stuff that went into this, we went to industry, got a lot of money. And PSEC was conceived of… I think all the propellants went to industry. We got them all done outside. So, major contracts, my colleague Sudarshan and Dr. Gowalitri pushed a lot of money. So, industry partnership, we pushed a lot of money. All the structural went to HIL, especially Sartre Instructions. Everybody said HIL will not deliver. They actually delivered ammonium on time. They delivered fantastic stuff. We never had to deal with it. Again, I come back. A lot of it is internal problems and the reluctance to go outside. It's difficult in the beginning, but it works. Yeah, please. First, back then we didn't have internet. So, how would you come to know that which propellant was used when asked? So, what's the data? We might have been used to read a lot of stuff. Yeah, not necessarily on the computer. You know, guys like me are oldies. While I can use the computer, I'm not… You know, I'm not particular. Even now I would like… See, I still have this collection of stuff that I used to read. And I know exactly where to go and look for what I want. So, I'm doing a trajectory analysis. I know that in phase one, so I have this formula for time of flight. You can go and look at it and see how I can solve it. So, my point is, I mean, you people are all comfortable with the new world. So, we are making this difficult transition from the world to the new. And most of the time failing. So, that makes me wonder. Second question. Second question was, how was Eastwood learning to distribute the data of agriculture to the end users? See, we had a central ground reception station, which received all the data. Now, one of the questions that came up is, what kinds of data would the users be familiar with? Okay. So, in our time, when I started remote sensing and doing all that, it used to be photographs. Okay. Portofilip. Okay. A lot of users had used aerial photographs. They were comfortable with aerial photographs. Okay. So, we had a debate about the digital versus the... Because, you know, a lot of... We were all reasonably savvy that the computer was going to take over. And digital imaging was going to become more dominant than the analog. So, camera systems, we rolled them. We looked at the TV, all digital systems, but camera systems were rolled them. This was one of the non-stick cameras. Okay. So, the digital world was clear. How to use the data? So, we set up one of the largest photo processing labs. I was one guy who opposed it, saying, the world is going to go digital. We don't need such a big facility. But in NRSA, we set up a huge facility to service the users. And I think within a few years, it kind of became bigger than everybody. So, we still have... You know, when I got to NRSA, they still tell me, you know, that you are one of the few... So, at that time, even after moving to a digital data tunnel, this world could not happen over the network. So, there must be some storage modes that would be used. So, we used to supply, you know, so you could order imagery. So, we had this path row scheme for the IRS. So, if you specify the path and the row, you can locate the area. The data products were created to such a position that they would register on that path row. So, we spent a lot of effort in trying to make sure the registration was okay. So, we had a lot of software issues. The result has been... And I was a member of one of those quality evaluation teams. The kind of stuff that we had to do at that time. Very complex, very difficult, but we did it. So, it just... So, you place an order. You can place an order for a photograph. You can specify what kind of photograph, forms, color, VLN, all that stuff that can be. And you can... Or if you want, you can order the one that's kind of computer compatible. So, which you can take and put into your VAX machine. You can also order a lot of VAX machines. So, order a lot of VAX machines. I think 50 VAX... VAX machines... Sorry. So, the main frame was IBM. Now, when it went into distributed computing, the standard was for data processing. There were several standards. But the one that finally became dominant standard was this company which made VAX machines. But company, I don't think exists now. But VAX machines were like the network set of computers. They were not big computers, like the IBM computers. They were smaller computers. They were what are called mini computers. And they were the dominant standard. I think after that it went. And you moved away from the center as you keep processing the data. And you could do a lot of things. So, those days we were somewhere in between. So, here there's a lot of data that you have to do. You have to do the attitude correction. You have to do the radiation and the calibration corrections. And you have to make sure that it resistors on the map. So, you have a lot of what are called repetitive data processing. So, I think these computers were very good at it. So, what are the typical end users of this industry? According to me a lot of people, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Forestry, okay, water, land use people, some geology. The idea was of course not so much the ministries as normal users. So, when I went and looked at, you know, later I went and investigated a lot of the IRS data. So, thought of an evaluation team for this. So, there was a company called Saraswati Sugars in India. They were using IRS data to evaluate the quality of sugar cane. Because the yield of sugar cane depends upon how much juice is there in the sugar cane. And there were some rules in India which are very unique in India. If you locate a sugar mill, you have to procure the sugar cane from around there. Some RK groups, you know, understood about that. So, they were actually using it to assess the quality of sugar cane. So, the higher the quality, the better the yield. So, they were actually using it in a very unique way. Nobody thought of it at that time. So, a lot of these people were also using it. So, my argument is today, you and I should be able to use it for whatever reason. Unfortunately, we are not able to use it. If I have to do something with remote sensing data or any kind of data, I use Google. For example, we recently did a study on identifying uranium mills. So, this is again a remote sensing problem which we talked about 25 days ago. But so far, nobody seems to have taken it seriously. So, recently our group may ask, we wanted to do this because there was a requirement for moving uranium resources across the world. So, we actually use Google pictures and we were able to come up with an algorithm that works. Not only can we estimate whether it's a uranium mill, we can also separate our copper mills which have somewhat similar signatures. We have a method. We can also get some idea of how much it produces. All this is possible. And you know, I left remote sensing and now I am done with it. So, even for idiots like me, we can actually use it if you put in a little bit of time. But this should be done by some 200,000 people in India. It's done by 100,000 people in India. Imagine a local problem. So, questions can be found in the highlands. Yeah, about remote sensing, what do you think is the potential? Is there potential these days or anything? I mean, it's time is over. No, no, no. A lot of it is domain knowledge. See, all this is computer stuff. Forget it. What is the logic of computer stuff? Unless you have an automated algorithm that also does the thing. According to me, a lot of it is still domain knowledge. You can even identify it. For example, this was biology where you need to know about mills and processing, material processing. Unless you know those components, you can look at it and look at it as something like this. Imagine, I am only talking about one small problem. You should take the mining area. So, going to India is looking at a global mineral market. It has to buy and sell. It is clearly something like 100 commodities. How much of this is happening? You know what is happening in America. You know what is happening in America. You know what is happening across all the things that produce it. All that information can be made available. And here is a huge arbitrage opportunity. You can buy and sell. It's a commercial opportunity. It's also a national issue on which I think it is. I'll give you one example. Cotton. You know who is the world's biggest producer of cotton in India? India. India. On the surplus here, India has so much cotton. It doesn't know what to do with it. Right? We are unable to use satellite data to predict in advance what we will do. Then you decide either to buy or not, sir, because you are not sure. Then you decide to sell. The internet decision-making system is completely... This can be done with satellite, along with some ground-based data. You can rely on Google a lot in order to... For instance, uranium, which is... It can be very controversial, you know, element. As are other elements that I use in mobile phones, et cetera, in Africa. Where else, for example? Identify regal history. My question is, you know, the reliance on Google, just by those two or three people sitting in NIS, I see a danger because there are so many more... But, madam, tell me. If you are a researcher and you're looking at... See, I'm not interested in that. At one level, I'm not interested in the national level. Sure. Right? I have an operational requirement from somebody, and I want to do something to teach them. Either I make money or I do something because it gives me... I can publish a paper, for example, which is a motivation for a lot of academics in high-end. So that is important. If I'm not able to do that, what would I do? I was thinking more along the line of the solution. I mean, I was very shocked to learn. That's a bad thing. But the good thing is, there are solutions like OpenStreetMap and others who actually map parts of the Congo, for instance, which are not covered by Google. Because it's a complicated area. It's not commercially viable for Google. So we have to have... We have to move away from the monopoly and move into, you know, radical forms of... I completely agree with you. I don't see a contradiction between what I'm saying. I'm using Google as an example. Now, Google then came as a monopoly. It came as a startup company. And it evolved into a monopoly. Because people accept it as a monopoly. Right. The other part is, again, I come back, it's like a GPS. Why is Google so useful? It's easy to use. It's easy to access. It's easy to use. Convenience. I don't have to switch. I don't have to invest time and effort to learn anything new. I have locked it in a sense. And big companies are doing that. I think even whatever we talk in terms of use, that kind of thing is what we aim for. I have absolutely no problem with that. But I think that is what we want. I think the great entrepreneurial opportunity in India is if this service is available as a public good. You imagine that everybody must have access to it without a promise. Why should I go and ask this row, can I get this data, then they'll look at it and tell you that this data cannot be given because there's some security in it. Young people are incentivized. You know, when the new technology becomes so seductive, like an alternative map becomes so seductive, because Google right now, the word is seductive. It's not a perfect solution, but it is sort of presented as easy. It's not necessarily easy all the time. I'm not an expert on all that. I'm a challenging analyst. I'm only saying what I'm looking at is it should be convenient. Ideally, one of the things that we talked about in IRS, for example, which is also a process that means kind of view of the world, was that data should be available to people to view it. I don't see that as an area where it has not happened. Back to your point, in the scientific institutions in India, it's five or six years, it was impossible to get a study of that. Without actually approaching a study. No, no, I'm an insider, right? I pushed IRS 1C. When it was launched, I was in IM. I wanted a picture of IM Bangalow, for which I was prepared to pay. I wanted to give it to my director and say, this is what satellite imagery can give you. I didn't get that picture. So I'm not joking, actually. So my point is what's the point? Today, the key of the amicons of putting out strings. Isn't that effectively like kind of building highways and then cordoning them off to not be used by cars? Because we've set up an infrastructure and we're not utilizing it. But this is again, I come back. What I've argued is as organizations go on a trajectory of success and growth. But this is not really going to affect that. This is actually going to help them, bro. Because what they're doing is being... It's a question of perception. It's a question of how you see it. Now, in this particular case, let me come back to the other entities in the government that have a role to play. There is something called the survey room. I have wasted about 20 years of my life trying to negotiate with them. On a normal standard that we can adopt, for example, on a mapping system for the company. The moment you talk about satellite technology, the first thing they will say is it's not accurate. Which it is not. The solution to that is obviously to use all the loaded things that you're going to do. Isn't it easier to deregulate it and let the market decide? Ideally, again, I come back. India is like... Deregulation in India means you have to have a major crisis. Right? So when did deregulation happen in India? You go back to 1991. It is a landmark here. And why did it happen? We had some 10 days for the next interview. And it was also fortunate that we had one more thing. And as the finance minister, and we had Narasimha Rao who decided to go ahead and... You can ask this example, because the end-user being farmer, you still have pest return data aged 2008. What will you do right now? What do you mean the pest issue, again, in my opinion, if you don't get timely information, even that is dicey. Spectral changes are not that visible. So if you want to do pest attacks, you also need a lot of ground data. And you need to link the ground data with the space data in order to be able to operation. Does human website have not much of a use for... No, it might not. It doesn't provide you that kind of... So how does redundancy of such high-value infrastructure happen? Because isn't it being noticed at the leadership level that we have created things which are so useful, which we have spent millions of taxpayers' money on, and we are, like, literally not using it at all. See, when we come back, you do any economic justification in the space program today. I'm also done it, so I have to speak from some experience. In spite of all these issues, in spite of everything, we have a potential in India, which I think is about one 10, whatever one 10, one percent of what it is. But that one percent is far ahead, right? Is far ahead of anything else in the country. So you're looking at any government project, and it's written on investment. You have to use a very cruelly financial term. Which many people may not like in the government. But my argument is this was a hand. Just one example, the inside transformers pay off by themselves. In spite of the fact that 50 percent is important, you can check all that. IRS, if you look at the overall justification of the few applications for the state government. Agriculture is potentially huge, because if you can link some small thing to the agriculture sector, the value addition is huge. The agricultural problem is giving a scale of problem. The one is the variation in agricultural practices across the country. So you need something like 200,000 companies operating in the area. We may have about maybe 2,000 companies. So potential is huge. But even without that potential, the justification in terms of the relative impact with what happens. So that is one of the things that I believe is the reason why this was given. Maybe when this was launched, the technology was not so advanced so that people can actually get those images and but now as we have advanced 5 meters you can do so many things, 2 meters you can do million things, 1 meter you can do a lot of things. Today we are reaching into 1 meter class. Not with that advancement. So maybe if I have to say everybody has a smart phone. So way back then it was only those version and they had to get images only at a specific center. But now with so much accessibility from the common man with the common man what the common man has. So now can the government take some initiative to get all those things available for the common man? According to me, conceptually what you are saying is correct. I tend to believe the government will enable my opinion of the government from what I know. Maybe it will change. But then this is anyway. For example, why is that? Your cell phone takes a picture. You need to build up a map of your age. You need to build up something. Right? How do you do it? But what do you need? You need a way in which it can be structured. It represents a huge amount. Our cameras doesn't have remote sensing capability. Why should it have remote sensing capability? My other point is a lot of problems may not meet satellites. To produce a map I just need a good photograph. I don't need a multi-spectrum looking at... If that is made available... Another point is a lot of stuff. For example, agriculture. The satellite data will give you a very good idea of the age. And you can get a big size with a smart data. But do you want to know the status of the crowd? Even that can be maimed. Like soil quality and... For example, you need a lot of ground-based detection. You need to integrate the ground-based detection with the satellite base. The satellite will provide an update very quickly. But if you have all the information on it can be easily taken as a problem. So I think it's a great advantage. Even GPS is a great advantage if I know the position. I know exactly where I am. What's happening towards that? I would like to give an example. What happens with the satellite data is that as an Indian entity you cannot procure data which is corresponding to Indian areas. And as an international entity which is not based out of India you can procure that same data because space is free to be used by everybody. But isn't that ridiculous that a company who is trying to solve a problem in India, for India cannot get that data? This is exactly the argument we used when we tried to get the survey of India to change. And this is exactly the argument which we failed. This is in spite of the government being connected to everybody under the survey. He knew the Prime Minister at a very good level. Nothing happens in India. What's the argument against that? They are worried about losing control. They are worried about losing control. But they have to give up some public argument for this. Let me come back. We still don't have a good digital map of India. There is a downloadable company to use. Why? We are talking about digital India now. I think they now require Adha to download your map. I think India actually has a requirement to prove that you are an Indian resident to buy a map from India. This is the latest thing. Even in my time I used to be involved in a lot of areas. For example, we were involved in a project and we needed to draw these lines. We had Indian maps but they were not good enough. I remember we had a set of U.S. Air Force maps. What happened? You can order them in U.S. from $3 to $5 to some address and they would make you that picture. So we used a lot of these maps. To get the same map I had to sign half it as a thing. I had a cupboard full of those maps and before I left I had to make sure that everything was handed over with all that missed. Other than I could enjoy. Okay. Is there a support of government organizations? Doesn't that help your costs at all? As I said, if it's a government organization they will give you the data. You can have the maps. So we didn't get the maps. But the problem is some of them were 1950s. Some of them were 60s. Some of them were recent. And you know, I recall this guy that we were chaining. We were also related. The wheat is growing or something else and you can see it. So a lot of these problems are there. Bicycle, right? Bicycle does this data. Bicycle is there, right? Which what? Bicycle instead of... they work with this one and they map the geography of these. Yeah. According to me this technical stuff is now what I call passing. Everybody can do it. Everything is available. There is a lot of people are talking about it all. We have talked about it 20, 30 years ago. I think most of it can be done without any big deal. If you have access to data and you know what to do, a lot of things can happen. But one or two entities doing it in the country is not enough. We need a scale which is huge. And this problem is not what shall we say. Nobody thinks it's a big problem. Because if a sugar mill can make use of the data. I think there can be many businesses which can be benefited as well. I am saying we are only looking at the tip of the pot. We look at crops, there are 100, 200 crops. Various things, cotton is one. Sugar cane is another huge crop. Ice wheat, we are doing something in this world. But I come back to centralised management in a large data in a large systems. I have a lot of it has to be some time wise. I feel there is a huge opportunity for all the things. There is a huge opportunity if you are not going to get the data. I think you should look at what I call demonstrations and then try and see whether you can get a foreign guide to come here. That way people are doing it on the ground. I think we can get data from Planet Lab. Planet Lab data is available. Planet Lab business model is a data of the whole earth every day. Yeah, every day. I don't know whether they get that but at least that's what they are doing. Is Rukh Unam done this? Yeah, we have all the data. Even now it's come to me. I don't do it. I'll be generous and say I don't need it. I prefer Google. Not that Google is disarming on the topic but at least for some of the stuff that I do it's useful to get some ideas. I don't use it. For me, I can't opt out to buy data from any of them. I can research and we don't get any. So who uses Google? I don't know government. I have no idea. I have this for 93. So you must forgive me if I don't know enough about all that. So what did this sort of do The Bhaskara TV camera had the state of art for TV cameras was about 100 meters. Bhaskara was one kilometer. Now we skipped this scammed technology which had a limit of about 20 meters, complete. We moved directly from here and when we talked about it it was somewhere here but the time we entered it was somewhere here. And then all the IRA series abuse that you can do so that there was a lot of confusion. So this is typically the multi-spectrum scanner you have a scanner. So one of the things in a satellite is anything moving is a risk. So the scanner is on oscillates and it covers the area on the ground and then focuses it to a optical system which fits into different spectrum bands onto a set of detectors. Now the number of detectors depends upon the resolution. As the resolution doubles the number of detectors in the optical system. Wow. So we go from 30 meters to 20 meters or from 20 meters to 1 meter the detector array size of the discrete detector. So multi-spectrum scanner is one guarantee. What happens in the case of CCH? You have 2048 detectors and they are very small. Within that same array it becomes the larger multiple. I think people are talking about a few tens of times. You don't know exactly. It's a very large number. So you can get higher and higher results. Does this follow the Moore's law as well? Something like that. Moore's law I think is much more well researched but it's very similar. So this is the reason and of course the other advantage with using linear arrays you don't need the scanner. In linear arrays we came up with an architecture which was very unique. In Landsat all the four bands are together. They are automatically geometrically produced. Here we have four separate lenses. Right? The problem with four lenses is each of them produces one image and we have a register all of them so we have a different kind of problem which is linear. So the architecture is also changed not only is the confidence level changed but it has been architecturally changed. The French came up with a different system which is also quite complicated. So we have these different systems. So again I come back. The debate within the committee. Scanner is proven. Landsat has used it. Covers a very wide spectrum infrared as possible. In this case you cannot go into the CCD new technology not proven. On this spot the French company French satellite system was going to use it. Useable only on the optical infrared range. Higher resolutions are possible. Simpler optics and illumination are scanned. So we had also ruled out the synthetic temperature data in the study. But you know there was a lot of pressure inside. We had a very strong microscope which said months in period and other conditions dictates on. So why are we based in a time limit? So that was but continued. So we supported a lot of that work. So the other thing is MSS and CCD based aircraft sensors were developed and tested. Microwave sensors were also supported. We created a number of study groups to take the technology. So between 1976 and 1971 there was a lot of discussion. So I have a question. So between 1976 and 2006 so I think RISAT 1 was 2006. Maybe the Israeli one was earlier. Yeah. So why did India take 30 years to decide on having a SAR imaging satellite? Didn't take 30 years to decide. I think the problem in SAR is technology. And a lot of those technologies are not available. So a lot of the Indian capability to develop the technology is also not available. So we put together a program in India. I wrote the report on this and Radar. So the technological capabilities at that time was very big. And that assessment was one of the reasons why we built it up. And I think we built an airborne version of it. Even now it's an area where a foreign entity or a foreign country can fix it. So a lot depends upon the goodwill of the US. So we did a lot of work and a number of study groups and we actually shaped the project. So the final period was largely looking at how to do it. And the final wasn't it the idea of IRS? We did a lot of joint experiments. A lot of technology that were being developed for other space is not like programs we pushed it in. In 1982 IRS was approved. Kasturi Rangan was the chairman. We also created a lot of new organization structures. And the combination of structure I'll talk a little bit about it later. So these are the main things. The turning point as I said is the choice of the CCD. And as I said, we skipped one generation. Again, I come back. If you look at it in terms of the conceptual framework for innovation you can actually look at the CCD as a kind of model of it. The sensor part changed but because of the sensor part it also changed the architecture. So if you combine them it's actually moving into this environment. So it was significant. The bulk potential of the new technology was really key. So IRS once even it was launched in 1985 had this ability to grow from the 35 meter of active material of the state of the world. I'm not sure I quite understand what this is. Could you explain this a little more? Okay. A product is made up of components. So you put the components together in some kind of an object. The product changes when each component changes. There's a new development from the component. When a component level gets to the change list the connections between the components can remain the same. If they remain the same it is what I call component of modeler in modeler change. Right? If I completely bypass the component and come up with new components and new architecture completely that is bad. For example, when transistors are replaced by and we do the same thing. Okay? Now in architecture in IRS for example it uses optics detectors all the same models. Except that it's connected. Both architectural change and radical change are very difficult for what I call existing large models. I give you the whole presentation. Okay. I will tell you all the structures what I teach in my class. This is a nice spring work. So what Sarabha left behind was a bunch of people right? What Baman converted is a bunch of people converted into a structure. So he gave a structure. And as I said structure comes with rigidity. Right? As I said in those days at the structure to do the delivery it also had the informal connections amongst the group of people that provided flexibility and flexibility. So you are looking at a hybrid structure where you need to do the routine part well which is the structure and the non-routine or the innovative part also. And for that how do you make this transition generally it is always done only through innovation. So innovation has got a social component which is always I think what Whisper was fantastic was that we were able to build that and it is largely the Dabhan style of leadership and the way which and the kind of young guys we were all there we believed that as I said Sarabha TV is going to change the life, the reality, hard working shared the same belief different views on what is important once it is decided we are I think that kind of system cannot sustain itself for too long. So between 74 and 84 I think that was really the period in which to do print for what Whisper was and that is really the kind of just to give you an idea of how it functioned for example I remember George Joseph wanted I don't know maybe I was 6 lakhs of rupees to buy some CCB products he couldn't get the money so he couldn't be successful. But since we had worked with the study group he knew all of us so I used to control the money as an MBA I used to control it. So I remember going and asking Roger whether we could find something so he used to be able to solve a lot of extraordinary personal connections I knew Roger very well George very well I knew a lot of the people in the Sanctab Centre also we assisted a lot of people who used to be there. So a lot of these problems were resolved simply on that. I think George wanted some more people to work the Pascara project was getting ready we wanted to divert some people from the project to be the development of the airport since again so those kinds of connections were really really interesting. So what made all this happen is if you look at it we had a number of integrating mechanisms projects was one, we had a lot of study teams I must have functioned on at least a hundred study teams a little more than a hundred reports of different facets of space. We used to have these budget groups we followed what's called program budget program planning and budget we also did zero based budget so we had a plan preparation we had area reviews we had discipline reviews we had a number of user presentations a lot of similar discussions because the one who took a portion of this can be one of them. So we built this cross fertilization networks of pieces and actually you bridge that gap between routine I think that is one of the great I've never formed it in any way I have a question about the structure why so like SSE and ISRO I would imagine that SSE should be part of ISRO so ISRO is still the overarching thing but let me repeat I think I remember all of them functioned of course of course and I suppose many of them respected them in the sense but ISRO is still open even today you can definitely go in directly sometimes you go out of ISRO because you disagree with me but it is quite a democratic place even now I don't think that aspect of the situation because it's today the levels of program planning so you have some 10 layers or 8 layers in my time it was maybe 3 or 4 layers but it was largely an internal informal group of committed individuals who took this thing and converted it I think Dhawan's greatness was what he called he kind of organized and supported it in a fantastic way whenever he said it or Dr. Brahmaprakash director of ASCC took a decision no going back just to give you an idea of the work I already explained to you the satellite, the payload the tracking system, the data products the data perception generation, user is the kind of organization complex complex organization we had a management system program management council project management board it's a top down center directors are to be involved the project director is the kingpin he is off and most have been project managers most of them most of them so the launch sorry so in between as the project progressed NRSA got merged with ISRO used to be on the department of science so how to look at the work between ISRO and SAAC Dr. Brahmaprakash I don't know whether you know of it possibly the greatest person in ISRO nobody knows about it he was the director of ASCC he had a lot of alarms and achievements a lot of it had to do with the fact Dr. Brahmaprakash was responsible for the most complex internal political system of ISRO there was a lot of infighting and he had to make sure once of course Dr. BP said something was wrong so he was in my opinion at one level I would even pick him higher than person he was the saint fantastic absolutely then we had a lot of made by decisions again the ASCC developed a lot of very great technologies we had these gyros critical we did indigenous development it flew on the solar array right indigenous development flew on we saved a lot of money the cost of what we did what it was maybe 10,000 the momentum is again we've built so to find and contribute a lot to be on this project and amongst the as the project got into the final stages we had a conflict between whether the system would cross India in the daytime from north to south so we had a lot of top management things and then finally we decided we would transform to what we had how much it means because they are very high inertia means that's under 3,000 500,000 now there are 3 genes and one will be in trans the momentum that they give and the speed you can control they will provide stability the gyros are the sensors the gyros will sense the attitude of the they want change they are also rotating devices but they won't change now the gyro input will be fed into a control logic and that will say which meal should be spun or should any change happen it's quite complicated so you also have sun sensors, earth sensors all of it feeding into the sensor so that is the worst torque launcher that is the air response I was in Delhi when it was not and then we had a lot of issues in the first days I think one of the problems we had never anticipated was the kinds of things that can go wrong so I come back to this important automation we didn't have a launch we didn't have a launch PSVE took 5 years for PSVE so we had to go and buy from the rush so nobody had ever launched a commercial launcher from it I honest was the first satellite to buy a commercial launch so I was involved in the negotiation along with session also one of our we have a lot of issues could we get an idea of cost of launch I come back and tell you a little bit maybe an anecdote that you guys want to keep in mind we negotiated a contract so before we did that we did a survey of all the available launches so we went and looked at the thought data of the US all of them were $35 million $20 million $25 million finally we decided to talk about commercial launch so we came back and said we will review the launch and we said negotiator commercial launch so we went and Mr. Session and Rangan and I we talked to them and we came up with a fairly good deal there were a lot of issues on the contract itself for example just as we were doing this Mr. Session was also involved in the launch services negotiation there is something called a liability provision in a typical launch a satellite launch if the rocket lands in another area and it creates some damage we have to care for the damage so the American solution to the problem is that you take insurance for liability so in those days the number used to be about I think something like $300,000 you have to take insurance and in case a plant on some place has somebody suits you you will use that insurance money we had negotiated inside and all of us were comfortable all the people negotiated inside including Mr. Session we get this is the only way to go about it what happened in our discussions it also came out that the Russians are also quite involved in the biggest space there is something called a liability convention the liability convention does not specify anything about it just say we negotiate so I suggested for example that we should not base this issue over the Russian the way that we are talking about instead of it you say what will happen if the rocket doesn't perform so we went and negotiated and the Russian said if the rocket doesn't go we don't think it will but if it doesn't we will give you another rocket free of charge then we ask them the question what will happen if something if it goes and does some damage they say it won't go and do damage but if it does we will take responsibility so they said a lot of money a lot of money looking at it the Russians didn't really get a point till 1990 was it because of the fall of the after that the Kralo deal is a passage like the Russian deal that went on high that's another story which we take what do you mean by commercial launch here as opposed to what the first time we paid money so let me come back it was 5.5 crores which was steep now we went to Moscow for signing the deal the Russian the Indian ambassador in Moscow felt he had to make a contribution so he went and had a number of vodka shots I don't know what transpired within that I was not there but both Rangan and you were kind of substantial so they said that the price came down from 7.5 which in my opinion was a big grating price they brought it down to something like 4.5 crores what you are really saying is vodka shots are more powerful so the launch cost for IRS1A was effectively just 4.5 crores even less maybe 3.5 crores few more shots 5 crores and I wanted to tell the pros and cons we negotiated get it down a little bit further the pros and cons told me don't be stupid I don't want any more fast trading and all this is good enough we will go so he was very clear we will pay but then he didn't count us the guys in Moscow were very very good and the Russians too so if you go to one of them they give you Indian food if you go to Kapustunyan which is the place I went he is kind of black if you take off your jacket or your ear mask your ears are black Russian used to work here I think I remember one colon who was in charge of the launch operations nothing will be there on the launch pad the night next day morning everything will be there there used to be one colon who was one of the soldiers of what's called a grad he would take a look at the rocket as it went off and tell you it's okay they operated under all conditions we have launched an IRR satellite under snow in a snow storm so for the Americans you have launch so you have to specify 10 plus minus 10 minutes of this the Russians you ask that launch they say 10 across it's a 10 across plus minus 0, 0 10 across that's no idea of launch a lot of it was very difficult and of course we were exposed to both systems so that's the kind of thing so just to give you some pictures a little bit of my finish that's pro sadawan this is my colleague Rajan I'll talk a little bit this is being commander now who was the director of the he also built this sqs earth station remember my sqs one of the he built it and this is dv Rajan he used to work in the satellite center before he moved to so this is my colleague Rajan who was actually an innovation director I don't know if I have it here he was the guy who network coordinated everything incredibly fantastic political sense he was one guy who was to say the most unbelievable things but everybody was to be all the directors and he was to convert a lot of what was sqs earth station he was working with centers beginning to do the things he did an incredible job and of course he left his studio for irs one year knowledge and then he moved to Delhi he worked with Dr. Kalam on a lot of issues very close to Dr. Kalam and you know that in India 2020 was a good one of course today he has become a sage he talks a lot of wisdom clearly leadership and other stuff so we still talk about the scope now he is trying to he's got a lot of stuff that he corresponds to the process on all the internal issues so he is documenting them he's reached 1979 that's what the problem is the other person you see on the left is professor Prashar Ruti he is the grand sire of remote sensing the first remote sensing helicopter flight he was done by he was a meteorologist he was then became a remote sensing of course I don't know whether you know him Pramod Kale was involved in the site project he was also the project director for INSAT and the mcf facility he was then director of the site he became director of the sccd quite an important figure in the history of art in India and the world we don't know whether the friend spot system we were about the same time we talked about it enough so we are not very clear whether it was the friends or India we would assume and now the problem is in pioneer sccd it couldn't be used why did we use it what was there recently in Rehomba technology changed especially what we have to do in architecture it's difficult because we have invested a lot of money and resources but they didn't see the potential of it what? I mean I used to talk to a lot of them I don't think they are just an organization I just think I can't think of any other I think that's the idea the organization goes back it is more than we would and NASA be what it seems also quite complex but let me repeat NASA was the agency we all admired and we all modeled ourselves no doubt about it I used to know a lot of them I visited many of the NASA centers it was a fantastic meeting in the early days they would give you all the documents they were doing I met one guy who built 20 very high-resolution Rehomba very similar to what we used to do I went to Godacus and met him he gave me the whole design document so considering the space phase was on wasn't that an issue I don't think they had that issue with India you never know where the document might end up European Space Agency too our connections with these almost any report that I wanted technically non-technically very secret or non-scientific they would give us so I mean that kind of a thing was there and they all thought maybe many of them thought we were not going to succeed I think in the case of the European Space Agency I think they thought we were going to succeed in the case of the Americans maybe they never believed we would do the Russians the Russians are always they don't give you anything they give you what they promised to give you very surely they would give you that more than above and that and post the fall post 91 post 91 they became greedy cryogenic is a classic example cryogenic was 250 crores for the deed which was a great deed but they managed from the contract they refused to give the technology and I think the deed went up I think it cost us a few maybe 1000 crores maybe from 4 crores to 1000 crores no 4 in the IRS but cryogenic was 250 from 250 to 200 I had left this over and I don't know whether cryogenic except from the outside Vodka shots didn't work no no there were no drugs in my opinion they become greedy I don't know whether you can trust me okay and now you are more commercial than the Americans I think it's easier to it's easier to do business with them company also I think with the Soviets it was okay as long as you were clear what you wanted Japanese impossible they will never agree to anything so my point is the French will sell you anything does he have any sort of contact with the Chinese no I don't know I say I am out of skills after 93 after that I keep in touch vocationally with some of these one man of course used to be chairman but after him I am not so I think I don't know what is asking I think the Chinese so I have done an assessment of the Chinese case which you have put up about that I think the Chinese are far ahead long-term studies cryogenic engine has actually put up a program can you talk a little bit about maybe after your presentation some certain technologies that expert development has come outside out of this program a lot of that see all the stuff that have to do with remote sensing data analysis and all the software around that a lot of chemical related propellant fuel complex they have done a lot huge stuff and my colleague Sudarshan Paili and a lot of this stuff the antics cooperation came out of work so we have done a lot but let me repeat if we spend 10,000 crore or not 10,000 today maybe 10,000 in those case maybe we spend a few hundred crores maybe all this would give us about two or three crores so that's the kind of perspective a lot of them all kinds of chemicals earth station technology some of them were contractors and they went and did even battery technology currently battery technology we developed some batteries we also try to create industries that can do the battery also at that time we were doing it for the SL people for the launch vehicle the satellite batteries we had basically buy the cells and assemble the battery and then put together the packaging as soon as I remember NICAD batteries maybe today they are doing it today with lithium ion I think they are lithium ion also I think is so good buy unless it becomes critical I am not sure I think there has been some news otherwise so we will do the development finally when the push comes to throw which there will be news designers would like reliability, quality no uncertainty components in heritage sorry guys I have taken too long thank you sir so those are the list of the cameras this one list 2, this 3 and the test camera we are looking at something like this one was 70 75 we are looking at 20 5.8, 7.8 some of the architects were involved in IRS this is Arup Dasputa whom many of you know very close friend and colleague for a long time Professor Rao here that is Karnat Path he used to be the director of SAAD also Rao used to be the director of the satellite center that is Gopalan he used to be deputy project director for IRS as well as the director of SAAD at some stage that is Kaleh Pramod Kaleh I already spoke about this of course is Kasturian I am looking for the one without history I think I agree with you there were a few ok but unfortunately the few who could have made it left I had a Karito mind called Mandini who was maybe better than all of us but she got married and she had to go to Canada and I think she stopped working she didn't even want to work and there is no one other than me ok I am talking so it is largely a male nominated but today I think this was changed it is changed because I am very happy to see that very famous iconic picture of some of the women scientists who had lost the warm so I think this is changed yes but then you still don't have any women institutional director I think it is happening in DRDO for example there are already a lot for example the person who funds up work at Nias is a lady and she is a very demanding lady and I think the IFA of DRDO who also happens to she is also a lady and she is pretty good my point is I think it is just I think at that time I really think it was the male nominated one almost all fields and I think that is why the discomfort now because women are beginning to it is just a matter of time it is like I am class when I joined it was to be 15% today I think it is 35% Nias for example we are more women than men on the faculty we are more women than men and I think we are getting to be a female dominated system so I think it is changed so I also have a work in iron on women directorships in the corporate world so I have a report which looks at women directorships in India and I found the system dead but the banking area is one area where women are doing XK academics women colleagues are doing better than men classes also teach better that is what I was going to say only banking is what I was going to say this is not the corporate world we are looking at directorships of companies in my in iron now I think I think when I joined it was about 30 30-70 most of my colleagues whom I teach are all so you can see George Rangan and Gopalan three important figures in the IRS again George and you see M.G. Chatharshekar behind it he became scientific secretary after Shetty also know all the consequences that he faced and of course you have Kiran Kumar the current chairman was here so you can see that from the 1st generation power from the 2nd generation you are not the 3rd generation hunger now into the 5th or 6th generation Kiran was a junior engineer and I first came to know him and he is now the chairman of this fantastic very good engineer great person very good person I think he is bringing about a lot of change in the difficult system that is the first picture and when I saw this picture I thought my life was over because the first image I did almost everything from the writing of the first Gopalan IRS to actually getting it here and then we tell you after IRS was launched on the 1st and 2nd day we had a lot of problems what was happening was satellite was pointing to the earth suddenly it would lose the earth lock and move away right and there were 2 or 3 major smacks which nearly made sure the mission came to an end one was apart from this problem that happened randomly you know you have something called a carbon filter that is put in order to refine the complex system the moment you put it on you lost control another thing is periodically the satellite would lose lock and every time you want to bring it back to earth lock you too extend a lot of propellant so in the first 2 or 3 days we lost a lot of maybe 20 kilograms of propellant so we were worried about why it is here and I come back to this there are 2 problems which prevents manual intervention in the 1st and 2nd satellite we must be extremely careful we had a lot of debate before all this and one of the things we always used to point out is we must have manual intervention in the best system but control engineers are very arrogant people they can't handle the problem so let me come back we won't have the answers even in the best and I will not give you this answer it so turned out the problem was a very unique problem see how it was happening is we have a sun sensor as the satellite goes over the north pole of the south pole that is the only geometry according to the data in which the satellite will see the sun and it will be pointed vertically to the ground so that will connect the gyro axis periodically because you have work here and this happens every time you go over the north pole and the south pole so this goes weird time into the system and every time if it functions only over the north pole or the south pole suddenly somewhere in the middle of the orbit it is getting updated how can it happen so we spent a lot of time going to resolve this we talked to NASA NASA finally suggested they used to do a lot of military experiments which put a lot of sodium vapor clouds into space so they said possibly some of those things are drifting so we look at the idea design it cannot happen but it actually cannot so you cannot foresee all these problems so then how do you fix this problem automated system so we spent a lot of time and I must confess that one engineer he came up with a fix that enabled us to bypass and route to the past and we required it so it had to share of huge problems and learning also so that's a picture of the Washington mall over here you can see that we were competing with the rest of the world is there a white house over there no that's not the white house you can see the monument and all so as into the right I guess of course this is a sad image so this was now gone achieved all that except of what was the government building back in the 80's 70's and 80's any problem it was waiting so long it was very nice so you told the telecom department they are not beginning to take commentations act at first at what point did they realize that one is necessary whether again they will approach them or they won't come at you so Prasad Nawab was a master politician at one level what he suggested was to experiment in order to look at the feasibility of satellite communications so we had a new open satellite called Symphony which was available and we tied up with the open case agency to do a major experiment where we demonstrated in practice with a set of telecom people found the ministry of telecom that experiment actually set the stage for pushing insight the insight itself was about political direction I must tell you Dhawan was a super strategist one of the problems is justifying the economics of the insight if you go back and look at INSAC one way it is the only communication satellite in the world that combines a weather instrument it has a weather camera with a communication transmitter for TV and communication for communication it is the only satellite of the world and it will have such an interesting combination it is a unique architecture nobody else had done it now I have done some experiments but nobody else had this the problem was the communication ministry was not really interested TV was ambivalent and we needed a justification so a lot of studies went inside snow to look at the possibility of adding a weather chart it was one cyclone right if we can do something with one cyclone we can do enough to say that this whole satellite is right so the weather instrument will actually add it as an add-on and when you add it it actually complicates insight in a very big way because it requires an infrared detector which has to be cooled all the time it has to operate at liquid nitrogen temperature function so if you look at that long boom on INSAC you have a banu the entire architecture is dictated by the weather instrument it will be a much simpler satellite and much more weather inside 1A didn't work very well inside 1B was successful we had another failure on one side 1C and 1D I think you can see the record of these kinds of things so the political choice was also dictated by this and it thinks after it became clear that the ministry of telecom did it come? so for remote sensing satellites also you mentioned that all these ministry of earth effects they will be kind of asked with published data so did they also kind of resist the telecom department? see there are two things you have to see are they using it operationally and at that time no did they have any problem in supporting it no they didn't mind support it they didn't have to pay for it so one of the great advantage of this was the user didn't pay for the data so many of them have agreed to say that there is no harm in agreeing if the data is useful you know if it is not useful you won't do so that's the kind of thing that we had see unlike the DR view which their force has to pay or somebody has to pay they didn't have to pay only now I think after the operation then why did the telecom department disagree in the first place see at that time INSAR was still conceptualized at that time they were looking at contributions maybe from all of them and they didn't want to make the contribution is one possibility second possibility is I think they were just incapable of accepting the possibility that apart from the telecom lines that people are talking about there are other ways of doing things so this is a secondary level so I thought was you know reading it I felt it was so with as Narayan's own company is coming through our space and many other private space startups are coming you've mentioned the investigation a little bit back everything needs to be some regulatory framework which would allow a startup environment to come up which will augment what ISR is already doing which I feel is kind of they're really in the area so what do you think should be the changes that you should bring so let's look at this regulatory environment a little bit more than week what is it that you think you need support from ISRO for testing what do you want you pay for it ISRO may give it to you today and its cooperation they will give it to you I assume they will give it to you orbital slotting policy frequency allocation frequency allocation frequency allocation is an issue frequency allocation is an issue frequency allocation is an issue but my argument is everybody in the world is doing it what's the problem with India but India is not doing it that's the problem with India see the other problem is in the earlier days there used to be what is called the IFR what is it we have this thing under the communications ministry run by this guy called Srinath wireless advisers WPC WPC so wireless anyone anybody could get what was nothing has been issued in the last 25 years but I am not sure they are controlling the space thing ISRO may be controlling the space so that is an issue I think if you want to change that it should be made possible to make it available because these frequencies are all international there is no issue at all even orbital slotting is not there is no clear policy on that there is no clear policy on spacecraft authorization according to me national requirements of orbital slots geostationary orbital slots we have I think 5 slots or 6 slots for communications we must have a number of other slots but then they are not alerting them to private agencies why not see they are not that is the question there is a lot of people companies who have been waiting for 5-6 years yeah exactly and the answer is that we will get back to you there is no response further than that so I come back see in the earlier days you had a wave because the WPC was actually doing this they were doing the negotiations on the international frequency registration board they were involved with the ITUR looking at all this I don't know whether it is now more please for various source control the thing is I had a discussion about all of this the problem in the government is space has many stakeholders for example imagery has depends as a stakeholder more ministry as a stakeholder frequency allocation as ministry of telecommunications as stakeholder so the problem is no two departments in government of India talk to each other that's not your problem that's not your problem that's what explanation has to do my argument is there should be a reaction no but the thing is then they will say I am the secretary of space I am not the secretary of telecommunications but that's an excuse it's like saying you know but there should be a standard SOV for building all space infrastructure which does not exist so I think that's an important area where you need to do something slots, frequency these are all the world is doing it but the good thing is even countries like Indonesia what do you mean? exactly no the good thing is people like let's say team in us coming together these things will establish precedent in the company so anything that we are doing now again one thing that I do ask slightly private companies something like SpaceX comes in India probably Bellatrix or someone they probably have their own private space so let me come back I remember this company Bombay I knew my colleagues when they joined they were related to the ZT Adrani was one there was another company I think Rangan was also one but I mean it didn't take off they were the only ones in the history about the license but that is because I am well connected with all the powers they are available go ahead this is probably a purely political question I know you left in 1993 but would you be able to offer any perspective on the spy scandal in the 90s the spy scandal my colleague Nandini was the minister so I got a letter along with Satish Dhawan who are now Leshpal station who else? so we wrote a public letter which looked at all the evidence I actually requested a significant amount of my time because I crossed a double most condense that it was wrong and if it had not been for him he would have all let it pass we don't have the courage to stand up for all this I happen to know Nambi his life was ruined but he is also ruined so Nambi is not a saint but he didn't do this and he is innocent as far as business comes so we must be realistic but had it not happened we would have had a liquid propulsion program which was successful much earlier all got a fight the liquid propulsion program has always had a import versus indivisibility he was the only one amongst the only people who can bear at the leadership level liquid propulsion system these are all debatable issues as an insider looking at all of the various elements in the I think Nambi's statements about technology, future and what they could have achieved should be taken with a lot of thought okay, not even pinched and the fact of the matter when he was guilty or innocent I think he was innocent there are claims that it was the political parties and characters there was a large significant element see one of my colleagues in this room was involved with some women Nambi has had a bad record of dealing with some of the internal issues related to CIS okay so there were earlier issues on that and that guy went into the I think and he wanted to take revenge on him so it's a complicated alignment of political internals and what I call accidental fighters and they fixed it that's okay normally they fixed it with a lot of list of people but also likely to be fixed you know all this because I also had some connection with some of the people in Delhi and they came to talk to me I was out of this I would have lost but anyway all this happened but he was innocent so Nambi said we must do something so we actually put out a public letter and circulated it widely Kopa for example was very kind Kopa and Bajji actually orchestrated it but then it was very aggressively run the campaign against him from Malayalam what about him forget him many of my colleagues children were going to school they were affected school children were actually they were telling all people in ISPO working in ISPO and other stories every woman in ISPO was sleeping with every man from the rest it's ridiculous apparently they were all orchestrated by various parties sir, Pandit was applied by your aka Anthony to get it off K. Karanakanen there was a political dimension clearly and the guy who was one of the major actors was the money current guy between the Naira and some of the other I have a whole record of all this and a draft of that original letter which of Siddharth and how it was signed we were convinced at the end of it of the entire investigation on vested interests in the IB political political alignments and the political factors and a lot of it was internet public washing and dirty this is a lot of unfortunate factors came together so I think Nangu was the victim in this particular I also went to testify on his behalf he filed a case for damages against some of the news I went to testify on his behalf he is one of the ones in the general but you know all this thing about India leadership K. Karanakanen because the program was like I don't know it could be either way you would know better so ok thank you very much for this excellent talk we enjoyed a lot so I would like to say that this is going to be an ongoing talk series where the next talk will be given I am a teacher so this is an ongoing talk series and the next talk will be given by Dr. Sivathana Pillai who was with the SLV team and then went on to become the CEO of Brahmos Missiles is it going to be here it is going to be at Yuma the Airbus start-up business accelerated on Church Street at the last Friday of this month so the talk series will have today at Haskeek and then the last Friday at Airbus Bizlabs Yuma on the Church Street so you are all welcome to join us again so is the theme of this ISRO no so the whole theme is to capture anybody and everybody who has been involved in the space program let's say scientists involved in ISRO people who went on to develop entrepreneurial stuff within ISRO let's say Satish Ravan encouraged industry to be developed in the early 70s who jumped on to developing industries in early 70s when there was all this license and everything else so we want to bring them into the play we want to bring journalists who covered space to bring their perspective we want to bring let's say so the mix of everybody I would say so only then we would get a complete holistic perspective so we are bringing people who are doing science and what stops them from doing good science if you want to hear that out so people want to play their own payloads to let's say Mars or Venus or wherever we want to hear from that community what are they facing so it's a mix of everyone so that's how it will go up and the hope is that we continue this tradition and we establish like 25 talks a year so so there's a mailer just go to newspaceindia.com and at the bottom of the page there's a mailer just sign up for it and then we'll let you know when the talks are as they ask thank you very much see our partners if you want to complete this I think this is familiar as like on my email news space news space we have just started off it's almost been a year so what I can do is so that you can have all the values which so so right now so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so the and we'll see and okay I'm coming to tell you something. 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