‘Padma Bhushan’ recipeint Nambi Narayanan is the scientist who led his team to develop the Vikas Engine and help India leapfrog into the era of PSLV rockets.
Nambi Narayanan also envision and work towards developing a significantly more advance Cryogenic Engine indigenously, to help India launch heavier satellites to the higher orbits.
PSLV, GSLV and GSLV Mark 3, all three of India’s operational spacefaring rockets have one technical feature in common, all of them (in one stage or another) are power by the ‘Vikas’ Engine.
The liquid-fuelled Vikas Engine is a mainstay of all Indian rockets and continues to do so, till date.
Nambi Narayanan Background
From a modest family in Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu, Nambi Narayanan was a brilliant student and had a particular interest for Mathematics.
After completing his Engineering at the Thyagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, Nambi Narayanan went on to work as a trainee assistant engineer in a sugar factory and quickly rose through the ranks.
Due to a family emergency force him to quit the job, Nambi Narayanan came across a piece of paper that would change his life.
A newspaper that was use to wrap grocery had invite Mechanical Engineers with a ‘first class‘ to join the TERLS in Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram.
In 1966, when it was known as INCOSPAR, Nambi Narayanan join India’s Space Programme, which would be rename afterword ‘ISRO’ in 1969.
Nambi Narayanan at Princeton
During the 1960s and 70s, ISRO scientists had a difference of opinion on technical grounds, whether to develop solid-fuelled engines or liquid-fuelled engines.
A vast majority of the then Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) believe in focussing their energies and resources towards solid engines as the technologies link to it were relatively more achievable.
The pursuit of liquid-fuelled engines was consider akin to chasing a chimera.
What is liquid-fuelled engines?
In technically words, liquid-fuelled engines are more fuel-efficient as they can be switch on and off, they can lift heavier payloads.
Liquid engines also have lesser vibration and can burn for longer durations when compare to solids.
And a solid engine burns out after use, the liquid engine can be test, re-use after cleaning and re-assembly.
Most advance rockets in the world are primarily dependent on liquid-fuelled engines.
If and when solids are use, they are only for the initial thrust (using boosters) at lift-off.
The Princeton-postgraduate ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan which is now regard as the Father of Liquid Propulsion engine technology in India, impress upon the organization to consider diverting resources to urgently develop liquid fuelled engines, given how they were the future of rocketry and how advance nations were achieving more with these engines.
Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, Father of the Indian Space Programme, had not only permit the deputation of the young Nambi to Princeton while he was working at ISRO, but also ensure that the bureaucratic rigmarole was clear smoothly before he left.
Nambi Narayanan complete his course at Princeton in ten months.
After Nambi Narayanan complete his course in record-time, when the Americans tried to poach Nambi Narayanan, by coaxing and showing him the high-end American facilities, it was Dr. Vikram Sarabhai who advise Nambi Narayanan.
“Leave the nasty guys and take the next flight”
Nambi Narayanan recalls the Father of India’s Space programme having told him.
Story of the Vikas(Vikram A Sarabhai) Engine
It was in 1973 that ISRO had launch an experimental rocket(LP-006) using a 600kg thrust liquid engine.
The 600kg thrust engine was minuscule compare to the giant 60ton engines that the Americans and Russians were using.
The success of this liquid engine in its test flight, gave ISRO further impetus to strike a deal with the French to co-develop a 60-ton thrust liquid-fuel engine.
And the engine was not an all-new model, it was an improvise version of a smaller French engine in the Viking series.
The French had name their engine ‘Viking’, but the Indian-side, led by Nambi Narayanan, that negotiate the contract had decide on an Indian name, Vikas.
Vikas means development in Sanskrit, but Nambi Narayanan saw an adapted anagram, Vikram A Sarabhai.
This was known only to the late TN Seshan, a top bureaucrat who had later serve as the Chief Election Commissioner of India.
Nambi Narayanan kept the real-intended meaning of Vikas a secret, owing to the bureaucratic procedures and approvals that ISRO followed when naming a project or a facility.
From 1974 to 1980, a team of 100 Indian scientists led by Nambi Narayanan, had learnt to jointly develop the 60-ton thrust Viking-3 Engine, at a French facility in Vernon.
And the Indian team had learnt how to make an engine, they didn’t have the approval for one such project.
The engine alone doesn’t make the rocket what it is!
So, on their own, the team had to master many other components and sub-components that went into a rocket.
It would be 1982, before ISRO develop these engines and later got approval to incorporate the engines into a project, the PSLV.
During the development of the PSLV in the late 80s, it was decide that the 60-ton thrust engine develop with the French would fit into the second stage.
PSLV is a 4-stage rocket that is power by a solid-liquid-solid-liquid configuration.
Then, it was in 1993 that the PSLV lift off for the first time, but the mission was a failure, after it encounter an error mid-flight.
Most of the critical systems on-board the rocket were validate despite the fail mission.
After a year later, in October 1994, the PSLV lift off majestically and prove the rocket’s capability to lift 1000 kgs to orbit.
Since from, the PSLV has flown more than 50 times.
With only 2 missions failing.
The ‘obstinate Vikas Engine’, which was develop by Nambi Narayanan and his team had flown flawlessly in all the flights.
The Vikas Engine was use in the GSLV and GSLV Mk3 rockets.
