Parallel Spirals

Standing on the shores of space-time…

Blog

  • ISRO’s Multiple Power Centers

    ISRO announced and successfully launched the GSLV-F17 mission after my last blog post. I am not claiming my blog post had any role in the launch or the success thereafter. Only, that the launch happened.

    It seems that there were efforts on to undermine ISRO by not letting it launch missions that were ready and already at Satish Dhawan Space Center (SDSC, Sriharikota).

    It seems that the questions raised by Madhavan Nair (in Malayalam, in English) and (perhaps) in parallel by Unions within ISRO (another story) about the privatisation of the full range of ISRO launch vehicles (PSLV and LVM3).

    This is in response to a speech given by the Chairman of IN-SPACe, Pawan Goenka –

    You will note the rocket behind him that is branded as IN-SPACe in the video. Usually rockets carry only two names – ISRO and India. The news story written by India Today actually makes it sound worse when they paraphrase him.

    This led to this clarification from him on X:

    However, going against the spirit of this separation of powers, IN-SPACe has been “productionalising” LVM3 and handing over operations of Kulasekarapattinam space port.

    This makes it look like there are multiple power centers (Pawan Goenka and Dr. V Narayanan) within the Department of Space.

    Even the release of this clarification by the Chairman, IN-SPACe makes it look like the Secretary of Department of Space cannot speak for himself or that Goenka has a bigger say in how things are run.

    While I was writing this, another un-signed clarification came from ISRO. Again, its not clear from whom within ISRO is this statement from. Is it from the Public Relations Officer, the ISRO Chairman, the Secretary, Department of Space, the Chairman, IN-SPACe?

    India’s private sector has its own growth trajectory to follow. While there have been successes – these are too small and will not help in missions of national importance. ISRO must be allowed to pursue those missions at the minimum until the private sector can develop its own prowess.

    I feel that the private sector is at least a decade away from developing that prowess. At the very least, wait till they can deliver three missions demonstrating this prowess.

    For this, the institutions within the Department of Space must work. The direction for this must come from the top – the Indian Parliament. We have a love for working in legal grey areas but we do not have any way to protect the ecosystem when the system implodes.

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  • What ails the Space Sector today?

    Arun Raj K M whose articles and videos I have linked to here, earlier, has written an article that is a follow-up to the interview he did with former ISRO Chairman, Madhavan Nair. Google Translate gives a decent English translation of the article.

    The lack of clarity between the three important pillars of the Department of Space – the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO – the science and technology lab), the New Space India Ltd. (NSIL – the commercial arm), and Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe, the regulator of the non-governmental entities).

    Internally, there may be clarity about each entity’s role. But, externally, the signals are mixed.

    ISRO had two back to back failures of the workhorse PSLV. This led to a lot of internal boards being created to investigate the failures. Even the National Security Advisor got involved. ISRO seems to be ready with satellites and launch vehicles. But, it does not seem to have got the nod to launch.

    In the past, an internal Launch Authorisation Board after consulting with the Space Commission would give these nods. IN-SPACe is not believed to have a say in giving nods for ISRO launches. But, there is no clarity if they are now involved. When the article says that the government has not given a nod, we have no idea about which arm of the government is giving the nod.

    The less said about NSIL, the better. An announcement calling for the post of a head for NSIL was floated in August 2025. It still does not have a head for the past 5 months.

    IN-SPACe has a really clear mandate, posted on their own website. But, it’s chief has recently being doing the work that NSIL should be doing. They made a call for productionalize LVM3 and for handing over operations of Kulashekarapatinam to the private sector. This has given rise to speculation that there is a power struggle between Pawan Goenka and Dr. V Narayanan.

    There was no mention of Narayanan in the programme published for National Space Day celebrations.

    Missions of national importance are falling behind – remote sensing satellites, communication satellites, navigation satellites, scientific missions, and building national capability in launch vehicles and satellite technologies.

    Despite recent demonstrations by Skyroot and upcoming technical demonstration missions from space start-ups, I don’t think they are in a position to replace the whole gamut of missions that ISRO used to run and operate.

    In my estimation, they may be a decade away from that capability. They may be two decades away from the capability to replace the services that ISRO offers to the nation today.

    I also agree with what Madhavan Nair said in the interview. We need a clear division of labour within the Department of Space. The Space Activities Bill could bring that if drafted well. We need the Space Commission to be the top space body in the country until the Space Activities Bill can be drafted and passed in Parliament.

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  • Weekly Notes 32/2026

    Home

    We are heading towards Onam next week. It will be our first Onam in our new home. My wife, Dhanya may not be able to celebrate because someone from her family passed away. Celebrations will be muted.

    Work

    Work was slow this week. I returned to office physically. I realised the importance of the core muscles was necessary in serving myself tea. I also found some trouble sitting on swivel chairs.

    Reading

    I continued reading towards the Second Interlude of The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.

    I caught up with a lot of newsletters on Substack, many email subscription newsletters, blogs I was following on my feed readers.

    Writing

    I setup Zo Computer to send me a lot of prompts. I thought a lot about those but did not get around to writing any of them.

    Hiran told me last week that he was re-structuring the notes page on his website around bound notebooks (styled after Twone notebook cover). While you’re there, you can also enjoy browsing his website (like the good old days).

    I started writing in Obsidian about how I was thinking about finances.

    I wrote a few more blog posts on this blog with WordLand Social made by Dave Winer.

    From Debian to Windows 11

    I put Neelathamara back in storage. I am using Karuthamuthu again. This is a laptop that came pre-installed with Windows 11 that we purchased for my daughter during the Pandemic. I am back on a Windows PC.

    I’ve posted many of the things that I watched and wanted to share with you on a link blog on Tumblr.

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  • Madhavan Nair on what ails ISRO

    Former ISRO Chairman, Madhavan Nair on what ails ISRO in this Malayalam interview.

    This is an important reality check. We don’t have enough people speaking up like this in current leadership.

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  • Web Travel

    I was reading this Walknotes piece.

    The Richard Siken book is prose poetry. I know nothing about poetry, to me it reads as prose, which I don’t think matters? Anyway, the point is, I bought it on recommendation from Azeem in Exponential View, of all places.

    The link to Exponential View above led me to their Substack. That led me to this piece that gave me one more reason to consider moving away from the Google ecosystem.

    Who is Azeem? The Substack about page led me to his X page. This led me to the about page on his website.

    And I still didn't know much about who Azeem was.

    Fortunately, he has a Wikipedia page, that does a much better job at telling me who he is.

    I found an interesting Fellowship opportunity that he had written about on Substack. I posted about it on X, BlueSky, Mastodon and on a couple of WhatsApp groups I am a member of.

    I was directed first to Exponential Views primarily because of a book he suggested. So, I began looking for the recommendation. I found it. Unfortunately, it's behind a paywall.

  • I am writing this post using WordLand. It was made by Dave Winer who writes Scripting News. I usually visit Scripting News on the browser because it makes more sense on the web than as a feed.

    I have been reading a few posts about the refactoring Frontier project today. I found it via a link on the News tab on Scripting News.

  • Zo Computer

    Srikanth L introduced me to Zo Computer.

    He had used Zo Computer to augment his investigations into the bank.in breach and the Bank of Baroda breach. You can now contribute tokens that could run Zo Computer for investigations.

    Zo computer is like a cloud and AI rolled into one. It uses different LLMs to do the task. It also gives you some online hosting space. You can use this to build an app or a website.

    I have started using Zo Computer to send me two emails – one at the start of my day and another at the end of my day. The one at the start of the day gives me highlights of news from space, energy, and technical writing. It doesn’t do the best job at this. The one at the end gives me three to five thoughts to consider during the night and prepare for the next day. I like the questions it asks here.

    One of the blog posts Zo suggested was Yuki Watanbe’s blog post in Japanese. It talks about his year-long parental leave where he changed how he learned before and after this leave period.

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  • Elizabeth Tai, a technical writer (similar to me), has written two blog posts that I have enjoyed reading:

    1. My honest take about life as a techwriter in the AI age

    She gives nice tips about how to think about life as a technical writer in the AI age. She is a software technical writer unlike me who is a mechanical and electronics technical writer.

    2. Substack writers, you need a website!

    She writes about the IndieWeb here.

  • Reading blogs

    I have often written about wanting to browse the web the old way. While I visit a few web sites by entering the url in the browser window, I like to read blogs on a feed reader.

    So, one of the things that I looked for after I installed Debian 13 was for a feed reader that I can use for it. I found a feed reader for Gnome called Feeds.

    It is written by Gabriele Musco.

    It is just a river of feed and has three modes you can read a piece that you follow – web view, reader mode, and feed content.

    Web view shows how the post would look like if you visited the website.

    Reader mode showed you only the content of the post without any distractions.

    Feed content mode shows you how the content is seen from the RSS feed point of view.

    I loved the simplicity of reading here. It is as good as reading on the web while reading on a RSS feed reader.

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  • My Adventures with Debian

    I had an old HP Pavilion lying around. I have named it Neelathamara. When I opened it to check if it had any old photographs, I found that it was powered by Debian 11.

    The Wi-fi was not working. Hence, I decided to try to fix the issue with Google Gemini.

    After finding success with fixing the Wi-fi I got more adventurous. I decided to upgrade the OS from Debian 11 to Debian 13. I used Gemini to do that as well. It did the upgrade from Debian 11 to Debian 12. So, I decided to continue to upgrade from Debian 12 to Debian 13. After that I asked Gemini how I could remove unnecessary files from Debian 11 and Debian 12 installations.

    At this time, I don’t know how it removed the apt-package manager. This was the manager that the OS uses to install other software and programmes that the OS used.

    At this time, Gemini just gave up and asked me to do a fresh install of Debian 13. It said this would fix all the issues. Neelathamara had a mind of its own. It refused to boot the USB.

    Frustrated, I posted on social media on X, Mastodon, and Bluesky:

    “I had a perfectly working version of Debian 11 on an old laptop. I upgraded it to Debian 12 using Terminal. No issues. I upgraded it to Debian 13 using Terminal. No issues.

    I was advised to remove unnecessary packages. While doing that it removed the apt package.

    ISO from disk is not working because my laptop is not seeing it.

    I am probably at my wit’s end. Yet, I continue.”

    I got a reply on X,from @KunalGautam.
    Network working? If yes, wget apt package, then dpkg -i it. Otherwise, download package on pendrive and dpkg -i it

    I did not understand what he suggested exactly. But, I posted what he asked me to do into Gemini. I also told Gemini that I wanted to install Debian and not Linux Mint. It asked that I tether my phone’s hotspot for use as my laptop’s internet.

    It finally got the point and in about an hour or so, I was on Debian 13.

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