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The swearing-in ceremony of Barack Obama as US President in January 2009 had a disastrous impact on the test-firing of the BrahMos supersonic missile, according to A. Sivathanu Pillai, chief executive and managing director.
The missile team had a nasty surprise when the test-firing failed. On analysis, the reason was traced to an erroneous GPS calculation.
On detailed investigation, it was revealed that due to security reasons, the US had switched off GPS signals during the swearing-in ceremony.
This was unexpected and the control and navigational system of the missile, which uses GPS data, failed. Pillai said this during a seminar here on ‘Achieving excellence through lessons from successes and failures’ at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre.
He recounted such interesting incidents from India’s space and military programme over the years.
DESTRAUGHT KALAM
Former President and ace space scientist A.P.J Abdul Kalam and his team once demonstrated an experiment to Vikram Sarabhai, but it failed.
The time was around 7 p.m. Sarabhai consoled Kalam and asked him to rectify the defects and get going by 9 p.m.
Later into the night, Sarabhai witnessed the demo once again but it failed a second time. Sarabhai said he would come back next morning. Kalam and his team worked through the night and set up the system.
Sarabhai walked in early next morning. Before Kalam could set up the show, he was called aside and told: “I want to give you a paper.”
Kalam nervously skimmed through the contents only to find that it was his promotion order.
COMPUTING INGENUITY
The Prithvi missile programme demanded super computing prowess that India did not possess. The US was not ready to make the computer available to India either.
Kalam led a small team of scientists to the US to see whether the US Government could be persuaded to sell their super computer Craig.
But an apprehensive US official turned down the request and told Kalam: “Sorry Dr Kalam, we will give you good lunch and dinner, but no Craig computer.”
Kalam came back empty-handed, but went on to develop the Pace Plus computer with help from the Indian Institute of Science and others in two years. And, Pace Plus proved to be 20 times faster than Craig!
vinson.kurian@thehindu.co.in
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