FROM THE CHIEF HISTORIAN BORIS CHERTOK'S Rockets and ...

nasa history division
46
an evening with dr. aBdul kalam
By Ashok Maharaj, Ph.D. candidate in history, Georgia Institute of Technology
It was on an icy cold evening in early February 2009 that I had an appointment with
Dr. Abdul Kalam, the 11th president of independent India and a key player in the
development of the Indian space and missile program. “Vanakkam [‘greetings’ in the
Tamil language],” I said as I entered his New Delhi offce. Kalam, an accomplished
scientist and what historians of technology like to call a “heterogeneous engineer,”
achieved iconic status in his native country after leading the development of guided
missiles and the indigenous satellite launch vehicle (SLV) project. In April 2009, he
became the frst Asian to receive the Hoover Medal, given annually since 1930 by
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). In a land of more than a
billion people, I considered myself extremely fortunate to be spending an evening
interviewing Dr. Kalam about NASA’s cooperation with India over the last 50 years.
NASA’s cooperation with India began in the early 1960s with tracking stations and
esoteric space sciences. Cognizant of the contributions made by Indian scientists in the
felds of astronomy and meteorology, a tradition that stretches over several decades,
NASA offcials outlined a cooperative program focused on mutual exploration of the
tropical space for scientifc data. The cooperation began with the loaning of sounding
rockets and launchers and with the training of Indian scientists and engineers at select
NASA facilities. Kalam was one of those handpicked by Vikram Sarabhai, the father
of India’s space program, for NASA training. Later, in the mid-1970s, NASA and
India collaborated on an experimental project called Satellite Instructional Television
Experiment (SITE). Touted as a massive experiment in social engineering, the project
was hailed by some, including British science fction writer Arthur C. Clarke, as the
greatest communications experiment in history. However, NASA’s relationship with
India was not uniform but ebbed and fowed according to the shifting geopolitical
realities of the Cold War. More recently, this relationship has stabilized, allowing for