7
Thrusters H aving taken up the leadership <strong>of</strong> executing the SLV-3 project, I faced urgent and conflicting demands on my time —for committee work, material procurement, correspondence, reviews, briefings, and for the need to be informed on a wide range <strong>of</strong> subjects. My day would start with a stroll <strong>of</strong> about 2 km around the lodge I was living in. I used to prepare a general schedule during my morning walk, and emphasize two or three things I would definitely like to accomplish during the day, including at least one thing that would help achieve longterm goals. Once in the <strong>of</strong>fice, I would clean the table first. Within the next ten minutes, I would scan all the papers and quickly divide them into different categories: those that required immediate action, low priority ones, ones that could be kept pending, and reading material. Then I would put the high priority papers in front <strong>of</strong> me and everything else out <strong>of</strong> sight. Coming back to SLV-3, about 250 sub-assemblies and 44 major subsystems were conceived during the design. The list <strong>of</strong> materials went up to over 1 million components. A project implementation strategy had become essential to achieve sustained viability <strong>of</strong> this complex programme <strong>of</strong> seven to ten years’ duration. From his side, Pr<strong>of</strong>. Dhawan came up with a clear statement that all the manpower and funds at VSSC and SHAR would have to be directed to us. From our side, we evolved a matrix type <strong>of</strong> management to achieve productive interfacing with more than 300 industries. The target was that our interaction with them must lead to their technology empowerment. Three things I stressed before my colleagues—importance <strong>of</strong> design capability, goal setting and realisation, and the strength to withstand setbacks. Now, before I dwell on the finer aspects <strong>of</strong> the management <strong>of</strong> the SLV-3 project, let me talk about the SLV-3 itself. It is interesting to describe a launch vehicle anthropomorphically. The main mechanical structure may be visualized as the body <strong>of</strong> a human being, the control and guidance systems with their associated electronics constitute the brain. The musculature comes from propellants. How are they made? What are the materials and techniques involved? A large variety <strong>of</strong> materials go into the making <strong>of</strong> a launch vehicle— both metallic and non-metallic, which include composites and ceramics. In metals, different types <strong>of</strong> stainless steel, alloys <strong>of</strong> aluminium, magnesium, titanium, copper, beryllium, tungsten and molybdenum are used. Composite materials are composed <strong>of</strong> a mixture or combination <strong>of</strong> two or more constituents which differ in form and material composition and which are essentially insoluble in one another. The materials which combine may be metallic, organic or inorganic. While other material combinations possible are virtually unlimited, the most typical composites in launch vehicles are made <strong>of</strong> structural constituents, embedded in a matrix. We used a large variety <strong>of</strong> glass fibre reinforced plastic composites and opened avenues for the entry <strong>of</strong> Kevlar, polyamides and carbon-carbon composites. Ceramics are special types <strong>of</strong> baked clay used for microwave transparent enclosures. We considered using ceramics, but had to reject the idea then due to technological limitations.
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WINGS OF FIRE As chief of the count
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provides only a thumbnail sketch of
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Shrimati Gandhi asked. I said, “J
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weaver shall look into the whole cl
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Triumphant The young engineers, 280
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was related to the tremendous speed
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motivational inventory of a leader
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a circle within which 50 per cent o
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Torchbearers Indian core competence
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clock for the next ten days, our sc
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In today’s world, technological b
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CONTEMPLATION [ 1991 - ] We create
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Emancipators O n Republic Day 1990,
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dedicated to making solid achieveme
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of an indigenous ship-launched anti
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16
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continues on a regular basis as the
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centres and 41 production centres s
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uilt nothing, possess nothing—no