Gurbir - Author at AstrotalkUK

Birth of the Indian Space Research Organisation

By Gurbir Dated: July 6, 2022 Leave a Comment

This article was first published in the May 2022 edition of the British Interplanetary Society publication – Space Chronicles.

Three weeks after its extraordinarily ambitious mission, the crew of Apollo 11 splashed down in the North Pacific, and the Indian Space research Organisation (ISRO) came into being on 15 August 1969. At that time, it was still operating under the Department of Atomic Energy, where its predecessor, the Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR), was founded in 1962. In the same year that the Apollo programme in the USA ended, India established the Department of Space in 1972 and brought ISRO under its management. This is the ISRO that has designed, built, launched and operates the 50-plus spacecraft of the 3500 operating in space today.

Today, its space assets provide services to its security forces, but it did not start that way. India’s space programme is probably the only national space programme that began with plans only for economic and societal development. Space programmes in the USA, USSR, China and elsewhere arose to serve a national security imperative. ISRO has met many of its original objectives for more than half a century. India’s assets in space provide services for communication, television, navigation and Earth observation. For scientific research, India has Astrosat, a space telescope in Earth orbit, Chandrayaan-2 in lunar orbit and since 2014, a spacecraft in Martian orbit. Some of India’s spacecraft provide services for the international community, including remote sensing, search & rescue and navigation for civil aviation.

One objective explicitly ruled out by its first charismatic chairman, Vikram Sarabhai, in 1969 was a human spaceflight. In 2018, India’s Prime Minister announced a new goal. Called Gaganyaan, its task is to place an Indian crew in low Earth orbit using an Indian launch vehicle launched from Indian soil by 2022. A variety of issues, especially the global pandemic, have ensured that the timeline will not be met, but the programme remains active. In January 2022, S. Somanath was appointed as Chairman. As Russia’s space activities diminish, opportunities will arise for others, and India is well placed to exploit them.

ISRO will ramp up activities that will include the launch of OneWeb’s satellites, the inaugural flight of its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle, the second test flight of its reusable space plane, the third mission to the moon complete with a lander and a rover and a launch abort test for its Gaganyaan programme. I expect ISRO to make a significant announcement on 15^th August 2022.

New Book – Leslie Johnson’s memoir. My Personal History of The British Interplanetary Society – Liverpool 1933 to 1937

By Gurbir Dated: May 20, 2022 Leave a Comment

My Personal History of  The British Interplanetary Society  1933 – 1937 Liverpool

Leslie Johnson wrote this manuscript between 1974 and 1979. It records the BIS story during the Liverpool years. It includes his reflections on their collective 1930’s dream realised in 1969 – the landing on the Moon of Apollo 11. This book (paperback and ebook) includes a foreword from his daughter Pam Reid, an introduction and an epilogue from me. An excerpt from my epilogue is below and “look inside” images of the book, at the bottom.

Most of the early BIS members were writers. Post-war members included Carl Sagan, Eric Burgess, Olaf Stapledon, George Bernard Shaw, Robert Heinlein and Patrick Moore. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Willy Ley and Isaac Asimov were considered “Astrofuturists”.⁠ They were all scientifically literate, and scientific principles guided their writings. Many of the visions they imagined then underpin our 21st-century society today. For example, the focus of Clarke’s celebrated 1945 paper, ‘Extraterrestrial Relays’, is now deployed in communication satellites that provide communication services anytime, anywhere between anyone on Earth. In 1971, Clarke was invited by the US State Department for the signing of the 80-nation INTELSAT (International Telecommunication Satellite Organisation) agreement. He concluded his speech by saying, “you have just signed far more than just another intergovernmental agreement. You have just signed a first draft of the Articles of Federation of the United States of Earth”.⁠ By chance, in 1975, when he was living in Sri Lanka, Clarke was one of the first to have a private satellite link at home.⁠

In his 1973 novel, Rendezvous with Rama, Clarke imagined a human society living in colonies amongst the solar system’s planets. Rather than a World State, he imagined a United-Nations-like body but for all the colonies of the Solar System. He called it United Planets and based its headquarters on the Moon. Johnson, Cleator, Clarke and all their contemporary writers were innately optimistic and shared principles of Humanism. In October 1939, Cleator described war as the “supreme and ultimate imbecility of the human species”.⁠ Rather than undermining their pre-war naive desire for a utopian future for humanity, their first-hand experiences of war vindicated their belief in a peaceful future for a united human race empowered by spaceflight.
The interplanetary community wrote about a future in which their hopes and wishes of the 1930s would be an everyday reality. A utopian vision where space technology could deliver education, fresh food, medical needs, social interactions and intellectual fulfilment. Much of the imagined technology has arrived, but these benefits are not yet equally distributed to all the people on the planet. That technology allows more people to live longer, healthier lives for the first time in human history. Still, poverty, discrimination and gross inequality persist within and between nations.⁠

An unassuming young man from Liverpool, born in the year the First World War started, Leslie Johnson not only lived through a remarkable period in history but also made a personal contribution to it. As a teenager, he established the Universal Science Circle. He does not write about the thought processes that led him to create it. He did not explicitly express his aspirations for a peaceful world united by a single international language powered by modern technology. But all his contributions convey that vision. It is a vision far from being realised, but incremental progress towards it continues to be made.

Book Review: Breath by James Nestor

By Gurbir Dated: March 17, 2022 Leave a Comment

Author: James Nestor

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Life (8 July 2021)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0241289122

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0241289129

Occasionally, a book comes along that changes how you live. This is one of those. It is concerned with something we all do, all day, every day. Breath. The central thesis of the book is breathing should not be a passive activity. By understanding and actively engaging in the process of breathing we can live longer healthier lives.

If you don’t want to read the rest of this review – here are the three key takeaways. 1. Breath in through your nose and out through your mouth; 2. Breath slowly – about 5.5 seconds to inhale, 5.5 seconds to exhale 3. Breath slow and breathless.

Still here? Good. How much or little benefit each one of us can expect depends on many personal factors. I used to struggle to sleep soundly. A very easy and quick way to assess the impact of nose breathing is to tape your mouth shut when you sleep. It works for me. The author even suggests a surgical tape for the job. But I am not there yet. I still need that reminder from my yoga teacher to “remember to breathe”. Sounds incredible – but I do forget.

The book is written with the wit and style of a thriller. In the 304 pages, he describes why the three principles above (and much more) work. There are some eye-opening statistics on human breathing. The lungs have a capacity of about 5 liters, but our lazy breathing habits seldom take advantage. Typically in each breath, we make use of about a quarter of the oxygen, the rest is exhaled. That is why mouth-to-mouth resuscitation can work. Once the oxygen is in the blood, the heart passes all the blood around the body in one minute. An incredible 9000 litres per day. Just as we eat too much – we breath too much 12-20 breaths instead of about 6 per minute.

The author describes his own breathing difficulties and his journey to address them. The book is his story of 9 years of research in writing the book. He does not do it all sitting at his desk. He describes weeks-long experiments participating in breathing workshops, meeting medically and non-medically qualified individuals with sharp personal insights on the process of breathing. Visiting universities in the US, understanding the remarkable lung capacity of freedivers in Greece, and the catacombs in Paris to see how the cavity of the human mouth has evolved over hundreds of years.

Many modern discoveries in breathing are actually rediscoveries. Spookily much of the data in modern research is consistent with ancient yoga and religious traditions. Much of what is being revealed by modern research was known in the past. Katharina Schroth from Dresden who suffered from scoliosis as a teenager “breathed her spine straight”. George Caitlin collected data on the benefits of nose breathing over three decades by living with the nomadic Native American communities. In 1860, he published his book “Breath of Life”. Dentist, Norman Kingsley built a device in 1859 not to straighten teeth but to force the jaw forward to enhance inhaling. Konstantin Buteyko developed a breathing technique in the Soviet Union that is still practised around the world today.

The range of ailments that good breathing habits and techniques can help with is remarkable. High blood pressure, asthma, migraines, snoring and quality of sleep are not a surprise but scoliosis, erectile dysfunction, eczema, psoriasis, schizophrenia are. The techniques are not just for those suffering maladies. They are used as legitimate forms of performance enhancement by athletes. A new market in breathing techniques, workshops, and gadgets is evolving along with new treatments such as Carbon Dioxide Therapy.

One final bit from the book. A typical lifetime involves 670 million breaths and if you employ some of the techniques in this book, maybe you can tag on a few million more.

Breathing instructional videos are available at the author’s website https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breathing-videos

Public Talk – Rocket Societies in Liverpool and Manchester in the 1930s

By Gurbir Dated: March 10, 2022 Leave a Comment

Manchester and Liverpool share a unique history in the development of rocket technology. The desire for spaceflight was promoted by the British Interplanetary Society, founded in Liverpool in 1933 and the Manchester Interplanetary Society in 1936.

They were not unique. Similar societies existed in Germany, Austria, the USA and the USA. There was even a one-man effort in 1934 in India.

In a public talk on Thursday evening 24th March, I will talk about the rise of these societies, the individuals who established them, the impact of World War Two on the development of rocketry after that led to the emergence of the Space Age – Sputnik in 1957 and first human spaceflight, Yuri Gagarin in 1961.

Some of the people who I will speak about are Phil Cleator and Leslie Johnson (founders of the British Interplanetary Society in Liverpool) Eric Burgess (founder of the Manchester Interplanetary Society), Willy Ley (a key player in German rocket society). As well as some early BIS members including Patrick Moore, Arthur C Clarke and Carl Sagan.

The event is organised by the Keighley Astronomical Society and take place in Keighley, Yorkshire starting at 7pm on Thursday 24th March 2022.