VK Saraswat | Vijay Kumar Saraswat

This is the second part of my series on my days with Dr. Kalam. As someone who’s spent a huge chunk of my career working with him on various of India’s missile missions , I have been lucky to know him, work with him and see him in action. October 15th was the first posthumous birth anniversary of Dr. Kalam, it was a nostalgic time for those of us who worked with him. He would never ask for any showy gifts or ceremonies on his birthdays, I remember. To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal, He would always say. That takes me back to our time at SHAR where we worked in Dr. Kalam’s team and learned Range Safety in the development of missiles. In this post I speak about lessons in Range Safety. Range Safety is an integral part of missile testing and is a prerequisite to the development of missile. During 1972-79, I had participated in many flight tests of Devil (SAM-2) missiles as part of the indigenous development of SAM-2 but was never expos...

Ever since the news of his sad demise during a lecture in Sikkim came out, I immediately felt the magnitude of the loss that was upon us - upon science, upon a nation, upon leadership, upon children of an impressionable age and adults alike, upon time … Dr. Kalam hadn’t been keeping well for quite some time. Age had taken its toll on his unbreakable spirit, and though he succumbed, he never lost. As he collapsed in the middle of a lecture, he was taken in the midst of something he had devoted his life to - science, learning, innovation and development. Looking back today, I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. As someone who’s spent a huge chunk of my career working with him on various of India’s missile missions , I have been lucky to know him, work with him and see him in action. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam was a true inspiration. He was a great scientist, an ideal citizen and a human being of impeccable character.  He made efforts to blossom young minds – full of ...