Professor Sarabhai was an exemplar in the art of team-building .

Once he required a person to develop a telecommand for SLV. Two

people appeared for this job –UR Rao and Madhavan Nair.
Madhavan not only lived up to his expectations but went beyond it.
Then he was to become the project director of PSLV.

Once during Sarabhai’s in 1968,narrator and his teammates had

made a mistake in their project. HE was not especially concerned
with the mistake in timer circuit. His approach to mistakes rested on
the assumption that they were inevitable but manageable.

On 30 December 1971 the Sarabhai died due to cardiac arrest. The

narrator was shocked to the core.

Then prof.Satish Dhawan was given the responsibility of leading

ISRO.The RATO system was successfully tested on 8 october 1972 at
Braeilly air force station at Uttar Pradesh.

Primary objectives of the SLV project were design, development

and operation of a standard SLV system. As a first step Kalam
translated the primary objective into major tasks.One such task was
the development of a rocket motor system for the four stages of a
vehicle. Another was vehicle control and guidance.
They made three groups to carry out the project activities. Each
member of SLV-3 project team was a specialist in his own field.
Aboyt 250 subassemblies and 44 major subsystems wer conceived
during the design. The list of materials went up to one million
components.

Almost parallel to our work on SLV, the DRDO was preparing itself
for developing a indigenous Surface to air missile. The RATO project
was abandoned because the aircraft for which it was desingned was
obsolete.

During Kalam’s association with Narayananin the RATO project, he

discovered that he was a hard taskmaster- one who went all out for
control, mastery and domination.

They met at DRDL on 1st and 2nd January 1975 followed by a second
session after about six weeks. We visited the various development
work centres and held discussions with scientists there.

They had their concluding meeting towards the end of march 1975
in Trivandrum. They observed that the one to one substitution
philosophy had taken precedence over the generation of the
designed data.

The committee made a strong recommendation to the government

o give Devil a further go ahead. Their recommendation was
accepted and the project proceeded.
Most of the time, communication gets confused with conversation.
While working on the SLV, Kalam used communication to promote
understanding and to come to an agreement with colleagues in
defining the problems that existed and in identifying the necessary
actions that should be taken to solve them.

As the work on SLV gained momentum, prof. Dhawan introduced

the system of reviewing progress with the entire team involved in
the project.

Kalam had the privilege of spending a great deal of time with prof.
Dhawan.

In 1975, ISRO became a government body. A ISRO council was

formed constituting of directors of different work centres and
senior officers in DoS.

The new set-up brought Kalam in contact with TN Seshan, the joint
secretary in the DoS. The first three years of the SLV project was the
period for the revelation of many fascinating mysteries of science.

Gradually he became aware of the difference between science and

technology, between research and development.
The SLV-3 project had been formulated in such a way that the major
technology work centres, both at VSSC and SHAR could handle
propellant production, rocket motor testing and launch of any large
diameter rocket.

Performance dimensions are factors that lead to creation. They go

beyond competencies such as the skills and knowledge of the
individual.

Although the SLV-3 was still in the future, its subsystems were being
completed. In June 1974 they used the Centaur sounding rocket
launch to test some of their critical systems.

Like any other act of creation, the creation of the SLV-3 also had its
painful moments.

One day when Kalam’s team and he were totally engrossed in the
preparations of static test of the first stage motor, the news of a
death in a family reached me. My brother-in-law and mentor Jenab
Ahmed Jallaluddin was no more.

Travelling overnight in a combination of district buses, he reached

Rameshwaram only the next day. During this time, he did his best
to free himself from the very past which appeared to have come to
an end with Jallaluddin.
Death had never frightened him. After all, everyone has to go one
day. But perhaps Jallaluddin went a little too early, a little too soon.
Kalam could not bring himself to stay for long at home.

In 1976, his father passed away. He had been poor in health for
quite some time due to his advanced age. The death of Jallaluddin
had also taken a toll on his health and spirit. He had lost his desire
to live.

Kalam sat for a long time with his mother, but could not speak. She
blessed him in a choked voice when I took leave of her to return to
Thumba. She knew that she was not to leave the House of her
husband, of which she was the custodian.

Once Kalam had to rush to France to sort some problems out.

Before he could depart late in the afternoon, he was informed that
his mother had passed away. He then spent a whole night it train
travelling to Rameshwaram and performed te last rites the next
morning.

The next morning he was back at Thumba, physically exhausted,

emotionally shattered, but determined to fulfil our ambition of
flying an Indian rocket motor on foreign soil.
With three deaths in family in as many successive years, he needed
total commitment to his work in order to keep performing. He
wanted to throw all his being into the creation of the SLV.

To succeed in our mission, we must have single-minded devotion to

our goal. Total commitment is a crucial quality for those who want
to reach the very top of their profession.

In 1979, a six –member team was preparing the flight version of a

complex second stage control system for static test and evaluation.
A fter the countdown, one of the twelve valves did not respond
during checkout. Anxiety drove the members of the team to the
test site to look into the problem. Suddenly, the Oxidiser tank, filled
with red fuming nitric acid (RFNA) burst, causing severe acid burns
to the team members.

Kurup and Kalam rushd to to the Trivandrum medical college and

begged to have their colleagues admitted, as six beds were not
available in the hospital at that point of time.

Sivramakrishnan Nair was one among the six persons injured. The
acid had burned hi body at a number of places. By the time they got
a bed in the hospital, he was in severe pain. Around 3 O’ clock in
the morning, Sivaramakrishnan regained consciousness.