Parallel Spirals

Standing on the shores of space-time…

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  • Book Review: The Sceptical Patriot by Sidin Vadukut

    (Posted here from Goodreads. Just in case. Although it seems more likely that the review will stay on Goodreads and vanish from here than vice versa. For posterity, perhaps. I also need to get much better at writing book reviews. I’m working on it!)

    The Sceptical Patriot: Exploring the Truths Behind the Zero and Other Indian GloriesThe Sceptical Patriot: Exploring the Truths Behind the Zero and Other Indian Glories by Sidin Vadukut

    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    I’ve read Sidin Vadukut’s Dork books and his column in Mint, the newspaper. I don’t think he writes there and more or less jokes around. Those are fun to read. With The Sceptical Patriot, I think Sidin’s writing reaches the narrative style that shines through in some of his blog posts. The versatility of that narration has never ceased to amaze me.

    I think this book of myth busting comes around at the right time. After a decade where India was lauded for many things – its achievements, people are slowly sobering up to the fact that India is just another country with its share of issues and strengths. It is during the previous decade that people suddenly started sharing wild assertions of the greatness of India. Some true. Some false.

    Sidin does a good job of picking up a few of these assertions and applying rational thinking, researching on the Internet and reading from libraries (I love this!) and illustrating how one could apply the same technique to other facts that one reads everyday on Facebook and Whatsapp (notice how this is absent on Twitter?) if only one spent a little time. Skepticism is what India needs a little more of.

    I don’t think Sidin was trying to or reaches the superb awesomeness of Mythbusters or Phil Plait or even Bill Bryson. I hope he doesn’t. I wish he’d go off a bit and explore more genres and doesn’t stick to one. I like this wandering interest that he shows in his work.

    View all my reviews

    My favourite quote from the book?

    (It is truly remarkable how NASA has become the ‘India fact’certifying agency of choice.)

    This was said in reference to a 1985 paper written by a Rick Briggs who considered Sanskrit to be one of the few languages worth considering for use in computer programming. He was working with a company that worked as a contractor with NASA. This probably was the start of Indians looking at NASA for bolstering various ‘India facts’.

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  • Hello World!

    We met for the first time at the traditional pennukannal ceremony on April 25, 2014. The ceremony offers the chance for the boy to see the girl and for the prospective couple to talk to each other to gauge their interests, likes and dislikes. Ours is an arranged marriage.

    That day evening, my family got a call from hers, giving their approval to go ahead with the proposal. We gave our consent as well. From there, it was a roller coaster ride. We are to be engaged on July 5, 2014 and get married on December 7, 2014.

    This is an online home of our journey that begins on this day.

     

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  • My First Sidewalk Astronomy event

    I first read of sidewalk astronomy in 2007 when I read about the work done by John Dobson and the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers . I have been wanting to do it and the dream died a quiet death as I began working. Lucky for me that someone else had also been thinking of doing the same and set up a page on Facebook for the event which was to be held across Mumbai.

    Sidewalk Astronomy involves setting up a telescope on a sidewalk with the idea of showing the public the night sky through the telescope. Since these events happen in a city and we’re faced with bright city lights that drown out the fainter objects, this event seeks generally to look at brighter objects – usually the Moon, the planets and if one is lucky, a few bright stars.

    The first sidewalk astronomy event in Mumbai was to be held at various locations – Nariman Point, Worli Sea Face, Shivaji Park, Bandra and Thane. I went to the Shivaji Park event to volunteer.

    The event was slated to begin at 7 o’clock. At half past six, the venue was clouded out. I was joined here by Henna and Arpit Gada. Henna was organising the event across Mumbai and Thane. Phone calls at this point seemed to suggest that other venues too were clouded out. We took a round around Shivaji Park to look for a nice place to setup the telescope. We ended up selecting a spot opposite the Cafe Coffee Day at Shivaji Park.

    We got curious eyeballs as we began setting up the telescope at the spot. People walked upto us and asked if there was a special astronomical event that we were out to observe or if we were doing a specific research. An old couple had also come reading about the event published in Daily News & Analysis, the newspaper. Unfortunately, it was still clouded out.

    We had spotted the Moon a couple of times as we walked around Shivaji Park as it played hide and seek. We spotted glimpses of the Moon and began showing late evening walkers the Moon through a pair of binoculars. We had setup a telescope but it was too rickety to show anything through. We used three pairs of binoculars to show the Moon.

    As we began reaching out to people, asking passersby if they wanted to see the Moon, we were helped by a few people who had come to see and had seen the Moon. I was tasked with seeing to it that nobody robbed the binoculars and began counting the number of people who were watching. I lost track at a 110 where a huge crowd of people came in and there were small lines.

    That number may seem small but we were doing this between 8 o’clock and 9 o’clock at night as India was batting in the finals of the T20 World Cup that was going on. We’d also chosen a less crowded spot since this was everyone’s first experience.

    People who watched the Moon through the binoculars loved it and expressed interest in wanting to do it more regularly. We promised to come back in May if we could before the Monsoons. It was a wonderful experience for many. Struggling with the binoculars, their weight, then getting a grip and then learning to focus and then the wonderful sight of the Moon. Some even spotted Jupiter which was hanging around near the Moon this night and were curious to know what object that was. A few people enquired about getting binoculars and costs and where one could get them. Some were reliving their childhood experiences of going out with Khagol Mandal and similar amateur astronomy groups in and around Mumbai. A couple even went home and got their kids back to the spot to see through the binoculars. We got a few people who were quite afraid of even taking a peep through the binoculars and then wouldn’t leave it after they saw the Moon through the binoculars.

    This is the real joy of astronomy. Sharing a sight with people who miss this. I wish we had spots within the city that were as dark as villages so that people get a chance to see galaxies and planets that are now invisible. But, for now, people wanting these sights have to travel quite far to catch a glimpse of some of the wonders of our universe.

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  • My Experiences at BlogCamp Mumbai

    While Mumbai has had a fairly good frequency of BarCamps in the recent past, BlogCamps have been few and far between. I don’t even remember how many blogcamps there have been so far. I was happy to hear the announcement for the BlogCamp at the BarCamp I attended the week before last.

    Getting to the BlogCamp was an interesting task in itself. I turned to Google Maps to suggest me a good way to get to the venue at Vidyalankar Institute of Technology in Wadala. The route that it suggested took me via a bus route that left me at a place called Shanti Nagar and had me traversing through the slums of Wadala and along the outer boundary of the Institute to reach the venue. Hmm.

    The crowd wasn’t as big as BarCamp but more importantly, it was an interesting crowd! We started the morning with a session by Rakesh Kumar on content strategies for your blog. He suggested that there were more ways to add content than just text – images, slides, video, visualisations etc. were now possible and made content more interesting and easy to comprehend for an attention deficit audience. He suggested ideas for having a time table for what to write about in the coming days. He suggested doing guest posts on other people’s blogs and also inviting guest bloggers on your blog to encourage a more diverse set of opinions on your blog. He suggested having a tone for your blog would be worth considering and building on.

    Rakesh really got the audience involved and the audience did have many questions. I think this set the stage for a very interactive BlogCamp, overall. I’ve hardly seen audiences involved in the talk as much as in this BlogCamp. Quite different.

    Ashutosh Bijoor was the second guy. He dazzled us with a beautiful set of pictures from forts and caves from near Mumbai. They travel to these places on their cycles beginning at Andheri or Thane. After breezing through Mumbai’s history and geography, Ashutosh told us a little about the group that he started. They call themselves the Mumbai Historical Sites Cycling Association (MuHiSiCA) and was started because the Archaeological Survey of India speaks only to organisations and not individuals. They research on places, cycle to forts and caves in and around Mumbai, clean them up, takes photos and then blog about it.

    We then had a talk on Video Blogging by Mihir Joshi. Mihir has a YouTube-based talk show called The M J Show where he talks to musicians and some Bollywood celebrities. He went to a digital content company called Ping Network to help produce the content for his shows. He suggests that companies exist that are looking for such content and are ready to provide help with production. He said that it was a route worth considering besides Doing It Yourself which always exists as an option if no one is willing to take you on.

    After a lunch consisting of Mountain Dew, rice, dal and potato curry, we went back in for a session on Indic blogging by Nikhilesh Ghushe.He started with getting the audience to get the Hindi equivalent word for words in English. Through the example, he sought to establish the nuances that one is able to achieve through the Indic languages. He said this provided the basis for some experiences and understanding that English gets rid of. He suggested that we miss a lot of this nuance even during consumption of English language news which does not understand nuance. He also says that not reading Hindi literature means we’re missing out on a large chunk of literature ourselves. Nikhilesh writes poetry on his blog and admits that Hindi is much better for poetry than prose. During a brief description of the history of Hindi literature, Nikhiles says that upto about the 1830s, Hindi did not have prose – only drama and poetry.

    The next session was by Alexander Gounder on SEO. In earlier BlogCamps, I have heard a hatred being expressed for people who do SEO for their blogs. Alex’s talk today seemed to suggest that the SEOers have adopted a more organic route on things now. The talk was way too technical for me for a nuanced reproduction here. I will link to any post that explains this better.

    The next session was by Mahafreed who did a session on Vine. Vine is a way to produce 6 second videos and upload them online. They’re like a Twitter for videos. Not interestingly, Twitter has acquired them. Placing a limitation on a technology helps bring out creativity and I think this is what makes Vine very interesting. We also co-developed the idea for a Vine.

    The last talk was by Anubha Bhat on why people should blog and on her own personal experiences of having kept a blog since about 2007.

     

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  • On Solar System Studies and a look at Planetary Exploration

    I had leave on account of Mahashivratri today and also heard of a public lecture on “Solar System Studies and Planetary Exploration“. Being a holiday, I decided to go down all the way to Colaba for the evening. A hop on the local and a lovely bumpy ride on a rickety seat along the dockyard and through the military establishments of south Mumbai brought me to TIFR.

    The public lecture was organised by the TIFR Alumni Association (TAA). If you were an ex-student of TIFR and are interested in joining the TAA, do contact them since they are a new body and are still trying to track down alumni. The talk was organised on the occasion of National Science Day celebrated in India on February 28.

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/pradx/12818200845/player/ecf75e29a5
    Image: Presentation. Image Credit: Pradeep Mohandas

    Prof. J N Goswami is an alumni of TIFR and currently the Director of the Physical Research Lab , known as the cradle of space sciences in India. He was part of the Chandrayaan-I programme and is an advisor to the Mars Orbiter Mission and Chandrayaan-II.

    Prof. Goswami’s primary interest is in the area of solar system studies. His talk was mostly based on this topic. He just dwelled for a little bit on the Planetary Exploration aspects. I would have, personally, have been more interested in the reverse. His talk wasn’t all dry though and it did expose me to an aspect of space exploration that I have not been following attentively.

    Prof. Goswami began with a standard model of solar system formation. Referencing yesterday’s Kepler announcement he said that there was a need to have a standard model as against one just for our solar system. The model progresses from protostellar cloud to a fully formed solar system in about a few billion years. He said there were three forms of solar system studies – analytical, lab work and remote sensing. His talk considered lab work on meteorites. After explaining the geologies of the “pristine” and the “processed” meteorites he spoke of how studying the radioisotopic decomposition was used to determine a round figure for the time when the solar system was formed. He cited various studies and these seem to be continuing to the present date with increasing precision. A notable Indian contribution was a publication by Wadhwa M in Nature in 2010 that puts the age of the solar system at 4568.2 Ma. Prof. Goswami then went through various studies done at PRL and in labs in America and Europe to improve on this date by considering various radioisotopes.

    He said that PRL also was building nascent capability in looking for exosolar planets. He said that we needed crazy people to take risks for such projects. He said that PRL backed one such guy and they now have an exosolar planet search facility at Mt. Abu Observatory.

    Prof. Goswami is one of the few persons who worked with some of the Apollo moon samples which were sent to India. He says that a very influential person spoke to him for about 3 hours to get him to work on the Chandrayaan project. The person, whom Prof. Goswami admired and respected led him to abandon work on the solar system studies which he has now returned to at PRL to work on the Chandrayaan project.

    Prof. Goswami said Indian Planetary Exploration programme is limited by its launch vehicle capability. Currently, with the GSLV still proving itself, ISRO can only claim reach upto Mars and the Moon and passing asteroids.

    Prof. Goswami says that involving foreign partners in Chandrayaan was driven by the fact that India then faced economic sanctions that prevented the transfer of technology. ISRO hence invited foreign payloads on-board the project. On the discovery of water on the Moon, he says that it was always there and that we did not bother looking. Hence, when Moon Mineralogy Mapper found water in the 2.8 spectrum range, they asked for references from the Deep Impact and Cassini probes. These probes used the Moon as a way to calibrate their mass spectrometers. He said that they just did not look beyond the 2.6 spectrum range else these probes could have discovered the water as well. He stressed that the data had been in public domain for years but still no one looked! Having a re-look confirmed data from these probes as well as in the Apollo samples even ones which were in the possession of PRL. In the QnA a member of the audience asked about the Moon Impact Probe water discovery. Prof. Goswami said that the decision to not allow sufficient time for de-gassing the probe before it was sent in to impact the lunar surface would have raised doubts on the claim if they were made. He says the same instrument will be carried on the Chandrayaan-II for more studies.

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/pradx/12818206895/player/16578177e0
    Image: Chandrayaan’s achievements. Image Credit: Pradeep Mohandas

    He says Chandrayaan achieved a lot. The major discovery was the water and hydroxyl molecules attached to lunar surface material. Besides this the probe also studied and obtained new results related to reflected solar wind components, mini-magnetospheres, sub-surface ice layers below permanently shadowed craters, water molecule in the lunar atmosphere, new rock types, composition of lunar surface and confirmed the basic concept (global magma ocean) of lunar evolution. The probe also provided a 3D map of the lunar surface and radiation environment of lunar space.

    He said that the Mars Orbiter Mission was so well on course to Mars that it might not need a planned course correction. I couldn’t clarify if he was talking of the one in April or an interim course correction.

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/pradx/12818637184/player/092dcb2107
    Image: Prof. Goswami during the QnA session. Image Credit: Pradeep Mohandas

    The crowd there seemed to stick mainly to his studies of solar system formation, which was expected. He did not speak much about the planetary exploration project. He was much more fun in the QnA and was very good at analogies and I have to wonder why he spoke differently during his presentation and during his QnA.

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  • My Experience at BarCamp Mumbai 13

    It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a barcamp so much and hence a write up. The event started at 9 AM and was located in Vile Parle. I’ve been to the same venue only once before and hence finding the location
    was a problem. A messup with a friend meant that I was left to fend for myself and depend on public transport. Sunday meant I did not want to depend on the train service because of a possible mega block anywhere along the line.

    I dropped in at 11 AM in the morning just in time for a talk by @anool on Maker’s Asylum. The talk was probably a good introduction to the arena of open hardware in Mumbai. People knew that there existed 3D printers and the concept but I think it was good that we saw some of the potential of what that could achieve. The guys there now have a small apartment in Bandra that offers some very basic tooling and are interested in growing a Maker community in Mumbai and growing their space. They are most likely to follow a subscription based model.

    From there I wandered around into a bitcoin storm that @oddtazz was brewing. I don’t know where he started but the people were interested more in how to get bitcoins and try to understand the concept. Perhaps a little bit of grounding in economics and a little more analogy would have helped the audience understand the talk but the questions showed the curiosity and fear that the Mumbai audience had for the topic of crypto-currencies.

    In all my previous barcamps, I have not had any luck with my lunches. I either binge and overeat or under-eat and get headaches. This barcamp was different. I had a sumptuous meal that satiated my hunger but didn’t make me groggy.

    After lunch, the first talk was by @henna_khan. It’s been good to finally get to meet her. I heard good things about the morning session and I could identify her instantly as she was busy explaining eclipses animatedly with someone when I walked in for @anool’s session in the morning. Her second talk for the day was on the question of whether aliens existed. Her talk went through the idea of how big our universe was, the basic requirements for life and then recent searches for life and why probably they haven’t detected alien life yet. The audience at the end of the talk voted that they did believe aliens existed.

    I spent the time after this talk meeting up with other barcampers I knew and met a few new ones. I discussed with @anool the possibility of doing cansats again. Launching is a challenge in India, since launching amateur rockets isn’t allowed in India. We’re left with satisfying ourselves with a balloon launch. The talks that I slipped through involved euthanasia, CPR and medical evidence’s role in sexual assault and rape. There were announcements for a Blogcamp on March 9, 2014 (I’m happy this has been re-started again) and WordCamp on the weekend of March 15-16. Both, that I am looking forward to.

    The other thing about this barcamp is because it re-ignited some old fires – being on the open-manufacturing list, being involved with SEDS and also contemporary situations like banking. It tingled many parts of my brain and I had good food to sustain me!

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  • The Cryogenic Engines of the GSLV

     was searching for information sources that I could use to write the Wikipedia article on the GSLV. My last bit of work on that article was on improving the history of the GSLV. I am happy to notice that the recent success of the GSLV has also cleaned up that article visually. Now, I was looking at the cryogenic stage to improve that section of the article.

    I noticed that a link had been added to the indigenous cryogenic engine called the CE-7.5. I think that was the name given to the Russian cryogenic engine, KVD-1 supllied to India and not the indigenous one. I could be wrong. However, the Indian cryogenic engine has been called CUS-12 here. I could not find similar places where the indigenous engine has been called the CE-7.5. I left a note on the talk page of the article to see if anyone else could find any reference.

    Another thing to notice is that Indian engines are usually named after the propellant loading. This is true for the S-139, L-110 and also the CUS-12, which is loaded with 12.8 tonnes of propellant. CE-7.5 just rings odd to me.

    This brought me back to the Russian engine. These are the KVD-1s. These are modified versions of the RD-56 engines that the Russians developed for their N-1 moon rocket. The KVD-1 were never actually test-flown before they were sold to power the third stage of the GSLV. GSLV hence acted as a test bed for these. As per this, it also seems that the Russians used this to validate their design and to prove to themselves, that the designs actually flew. Hence, they too were quite happy with the success of the first three flights (one was a partial success though ISRO claims it as a success) of the GSLV.

    An interesting paper [PDF] published in the AIAA in 2006 provided better information and details. These are a better source of information since these are by the people from the institution that actually designed this engine. The paper is in itself worth a blog post and I will perhaps read it in its entirety before writing here again. For the purposes of this post, the paper clarified that the KVD-1 was a modified version of and not a rename of the RD-56. The two are quite different. The KVD-1 was developed specifically to power the upper stage of launch vehicles, hence suited to the need of the GSLV. It may also be worth your while to read up on gas generator cycles – especially the staged combustion cycle.

  • ISRO’s Naughty Boy puts India in the Cryo Club

    The “naughty boy” reference in the title of this post is how the Mission Director, GSLV K Sivan called the GSLV. He said the naughty boy had finally obeyed the flight path and delivered the GSAT-14 into orbit.

    Today’s success is a big deal for India. India has been trying to build launch vehicles capable of launching communication satellites since the 1990s. They initially thought they would buy the technology from the Soviet Union. It’s collapse and faced by pressure from the US, India’s then ISRO Chairman, Prof U R Rao decided to embark on India’s indigenous cryogenic programme called the Cryogenic Upper Stage Project (CUSP). The launch today is the final culmination of that project started in 1994. As the current ISRO Chairman rightly said, “20 years of efforts in realising an indigenous engine and stage has now fructified”.

    Today’s success was built on the hard work of a lot of people in industry and in ISRO. The problems that have been plaguing the project in the last 5 years include three flight failures. The team had undergone a gruelling review from several boards and had made several design changes and run several tests. The failures as the LPSC Director said after the launch were painful.

    I must admit that I was really tense before the telecast started. The telecast began at 1530 hrs (IST) on Doordarshan instead of the publicised 1552 hrs (IST). Seeing the sombre faces of those present there did not ease my tension. My tension persisted till about the cryogenic engine ignition.

    Unlike ordinary telecasts that are met with quiet claps at each stage separation event, people were actually up on their feet after the second stage separation. The first smiles and applause broke out as the cryogenic engine lit up as planned. As the ignition was sustained, that is, more claps broke out. A few smiles appeared on the people’s faces 300 seconds into the flight of the cryogenic stage. As the stage efficiently provided enough velocity to the put the satellite into orbit, everyone in the Mission Control Center was on their feet and with their faces glued to the screen. I had not seen so much tension in the room even during the Mars mission!

    I personally would rate this success a higher one than even the Mars mission. Success in this critical technology enables India’s space programme to indigenously launch communication satellites, launch interplanetary missions like the Chandrayaan-II and perhaps even the second Mars mission and opens the ground for heavier science missions that India has not considered yet.

    While this was an important success, the improvements need to continue and the GSLV needs to show more consistency in its success rate in the future before it can be trusted with more important missions like Chandrayaan-II. If the GSLV Mk-III mission slated for March-April 2014 succeeds, India will gain capability in launching all classes of satellites it builds by the end of this decade.

    There are more tests in the road ahead, but tonight we celebrate another important milestone  in the Indian Space Programme. I had a nice medu-wada sambhar, the fuel that powers ISRO in the evening to celebrate.

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  • Red Letter day for the GSLV

    January 5, 2014 is a really important day in Indian Space History. On this day, the GSLV on its eighth launch, is scheduled for lift off at 1618 hrs (IST).

    The 29 hour countdown to the lift-off started today morning at 1118 hrs (IST). At the time of writing this post, things are proceeding smoothly. ISRO has been updating through their website and via their new Twitter and Facebook accounts.

    This is a critical test for the vehicle as a whole. I had elaborated on some of the improvements that ISRO has made to this vehicle, the GSLV Mk-II, in a previous post. The success of this launch would set the agenda and the time table for India’s communication satellite launches, interplanetary missions and the human space flight programme.

    In fact, most of the media reports have also concentrated on the vehicle and largely ignored reporting on the payload, the GSAT-14. Besides the usual C-band and Ku-band transponders, it is carrying a fibre optic gyro, active pixel sun sensor, Ka band propogation experiments and thermal control coating experiments. What these things are not explained even in the ISRO brochure.

    The Doordarshan telecast and webcast begins rather at 1552 hrs (IST). It does seem rather too precise, does it not?

    I am not going to try and live-blog this launch. I prefer to write here after I experience all the excitement there is and write here rather calmly.

    Best wishes to ISRO and Godspeed GSLV-D5 and GSAT-14.

  • An Indian on the Moon?

    It was Jeff Foust who first alerted me to this news story via Twitter.

    Indian report claims ISRO and Indian defense ministry have signed an MOU to study a human lunar mission: http://t.co/Z1qO4e39kV

    — Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) December 27, 2013

     He himself seemed surprised by this report as were space enthusiasts like me. As he says..

    That report is interesting as India has deprioritized human spaceflight in recent years; even robotic Moon missions lower priority vs Mars.

    — Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) December 27, 2013

    We just don’t have all the components in place to attempt human spaceflight yet – most notably, a human rated launch vehicle. Work has been on-going on the Crew Module which is likely to be first tested on a test-flight of the GSLV Mk-III according to a recent op-ed written by ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan in the Deccan Chronicle. The article goes on to state that this vehicle will commence demonstration flights in 2016.

    Today, ISRO has refuted the claims made by their colleagues in the Armed Forces Medical Wing. The Armed Forces Medical Wing officials seemed to provide very detailed and descriptive answers on what they had on hand and what they hoped to do with the data.

    It seems that 2014 will be an interesting year. Srinivas Laxman (a friend) wrote this for the Times of India. The story essentially says that even if the Air Force is ready, ISRO just isn’t. It will be interesting to see this story play out and see if ISRO gets a shot in the arm for its human space flight programme as a result of this tussle. This makes the flight of the GSLV-D5 this Sunday even more important, as a stepping stone to success.