When ISRO’s office was a church, its launchpad a beach | Condé Nast Traveller India

Rockets were assembled at the altar, scientists lived at the bishop’s residence...

In the 1960s, when India's aerospace programme was just taking off, a beach just outside Thiruvananthapuram served as the lab for several experiments in aeronautics. Scientists, including Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, converted an out-of-use church near the beach into their office. In a recent book, Ramabhadran Aravamudan, a former director of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota and of the ISRO Satellite Centre, Bengaluru, writes about this place and that time in India's space odyssey: WHEN: 1960s WHERE: Thumba, northern suburb of Thiruvanathapuram "Since there were very few concrete buildings

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