Courage, Commitment and
Endurance
AS A LEADER WE NEED TO passionately own our mission. This brings the courage of making any sacrifice for it. We also need presence of mind and strong nerves, Here are two example.
At every stage of its development, the SLV-3 team was blessed with some extraordinarily courage people. Shri Sivakaminathan was bringing the C-band transponder1(transponder is an airborne instrument that help the radar to back the missle thousand of kilometers.) from Trivandrum to SHAR for integration with SLV-3. The SLV-3 launch schedule was dependent on the arrival and integration of this. On lading at the Madras(Chennai) airport, the aircraft in which Sivakami was travelling skidded and overshot the runway. Dense smoke engulfed the aircraft. Everyone jumped out of the aircraft throught the emergency exit and desperately fought to save him/herself--all except Sivakami who stayed in the aircraft till he removed the transponder from his baggage. He was among the last few person to emerge from the smoke, holding the transponder close to his chest. This is the level of dedication and the transponder close to his chest. This is the level of dedication the attachment to the project, which gives courage to make any sacrifice.
Another incident happened during the third launch of SLV-3, The count down sequence was proceeding smoothly. There were two operation to be carried out on the launcher- on the release of the spacecraft umbilical and the other for the release of the arms holding the vehicle. Both these were pneumatically operated system remotely controlled from Block House. The arms got released as expected However, the spacecraft umbilical release system failed to respond to the command. This put on hold the countdown automatically. There was a suspense on how to got about, and the launch mangers huddled together to find a solution. Shri M.R Kurup and I volunteered to reach the umbilical system through a ladder to manually release it. Seeing the situation, one young tradesman of SHAR, Shri Pappaiah, volunteered to climb on the launcher and release the mechanism manually. After clearance by the concerned, he accomplished this marvelous feat the vehicle was launched that day. I can never forget such committed individuals who have been the backbone of ISRO.
- Next topic is Experience in a ful moon night (coming soon)
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