Previous governments had no faith in ISRO: Ex-rocket scientist Nambi Narayanan

Legendary Indian aerospace scientist Nambi Narayanan, who worked for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and contributed significantly to the Indian space program by developing the Vikas rocket engine, counted the struggles that the ace space research organisation had to face during earlier governments (Congress).

Narayanan walked down memory lane in an interview with The New Indian.

Speaking about the initial days and the struggle they had to endure to get funding from the government, Narayanan said, “Different governments have different priorities. We did not have any budget allocation. We did not have a jeep or car. We just had a bus and that’s it. The bus ran two shifts and we had to manage only with that. In fact, I carried a payload on a government bus because we had no vehicles. Even when Kalam took over to develop the SLV rocket, the budget was not available for the asking. Some money was granted to us, but that wasn’t enough.”

“Though I did not complain, the fact remains that they (the then governments) did not have any faith in ISRO. And there were opinions too. Later when we approached the government for PSLV approval, the budget was not readily available,” he added.

Narayanan re-counted the reasons behind the shortage of funds. He said, “There were multiple factors; first is the priorities of the government, then the second factor was their faith in ISRO and the third one is ISRO’s own priorities. But later we managed to establish our own credentials in terms of performance, thanks to a dedicated workforce which was absolutely corruption-free.”

“In ISRO, we have the best people in the Country with us. We were proving our mettle and in the process, we had more and more budget. We did not have enough money even for the vehicle propulsion, which was looked after by me. In fact, the project was very much delayed because of the want of money. But when time went by and we proved ourselves in space research, then the government had an appreciation; then as time went by, the satellite business came and we got the funding,” Narayanan added.

As far as the Chandrayaan-3 mission is concerned, Narayanan said, “It is a prelude to a manned mission which will later pave the way to interplanetary travel. ISRO will then try to use moon as a stop-over point in the interplanetary travel. Now that we have proved to ourselves that we can land on the moon, we will take the next step for the manned mission provided there is enough funding for that.”