You know what, 1-2 (1st year 2nd semester) was a hectic time in my life. I remember the whole August 2021 period vividly. The stressful period had just ended and I had joined this research group in the Physics department, I was aimlessly scrolling through the Facebook groups the students use to communicate and I found out about ongoing SEDS BPHC Inductions. I will not lie, I was not even aware of its existence before seeing that flyer. I went through the questionnaires and I instantly knew that I could not solve more than half of them in the given deadline considering my commitments.

I just scrambled through to find the easiest one which happened to be the Recovery one. Long behold, I prepared my solutions and submitted them. Sometime later, I got a mail that I had passed the round and required a further interview. Through that and I was a member. My induction record still is at 100% (winkface).

I prepared these in like two hours.

Had some general meetings with the team, did some basic parachute work. Shortly after, also joined the Safety Team and am doing some work there. I know a few people from SEDS BPHC will go through this, but I do not feel like my skills have been made complete use of. I went through Spaceport America reports of teams and read through various recovery mechanisms used. We decided to make a single parachute with its drogue as the reefed state and the main as the unreefed state. The parachute is supposed to undergo manufacturing hopefully in the coming weeks. It is a tried and tested mechanism and nothing like the ones MIT or UCS does. But it is something. It is our start at the very least. Shoutout to MIT Rocketry Wiki though. If I do keep working at SEDS BPHC, I do hope to try to make some of the more adventurous and technically demanding recovery mechanisms.

I did try to make a shift to the research division of the team in either Remote Sensing or Orbit Detection but I was understandably asked to put my energy into Recovery.

Space does happen to be an interesting sphere for the Indian economy. Dhruva, Pixxel, Skyroot and all that. It is a space (ahh, the semi-serious pun) that has loads of open opportunities to cap and that is somewhat where SEDS BPHC is headed.

The tricky part about space is that it requires loads of capital upfront with maximum risk and minimal guarantee. I mean we can take a quick look and compare ISROs and NASA's budgets. I have some old values here as quoted by the agencies themselves.

Some old values.

On some further read-up, ISRO and all its subsidiaries got allocated roughly 1880 million USD compared to NASA’s 23271 million USD budget for the 21-22 season. We do not need to use more than a percentage of our brain to understand the difference at scale in which both these organisations work. The US has the billionaire space race with Bezos focused on what he knows best, forming a true at-scale industrial base in space. Richard Branson is using his skills picked up in the aviation sector to open up better space tourism and travel. And Elon Musk trying to colonise Mars. Although there are more people and companies in the race, come on, these are the only ones with enough resources to be able to largely make through. I still remember when I first saw USC reach space, it was inspirational. And teams like Operation Space. These teams have the benefit of having industrialists in the same sector in their own backyard.

Come to India and you have got companies being barely able to raise double-digit millions. Is it about technology, skill and timing; maybe? Maybe not?

In developing countries there are so many other problems to take care of, you feel morally wrong allocating large sums to sectors like space, but the heart wants what it wants.

Here at SEDS BPHC, the main team is pretty much being led by people my age. I do see the zeal in them, they have the picture. Big ambitions flowing, but then again who does not. Nobody sits and says, oh I just want to launch this one rocket and then sit down. You always want to be the biggest and the best. And quoting quite honestly it does not come from repeating what others do.

It is like that stupid app Koo all over again. I still can not believe it is still up and running. I mean how do you rip off Twitter so blatantly and feel proud of it. Same as the PayPal and PayTM shit. But that is a good topic for some other day.

You have to be innovative. Innovative requires money. Money requires presence, authenticity. Authenticity requires a feat. The feat requires innovation. And that is where most die. I am excited to see what SEDS BPHC makes out of it. If I were to lay prediction right now, it does not become big as it is right now. Some people break out of it and make it big if they ever do. Early call, but let us see. I am enjoying it as of now.

Rocketry is something that has just started in my life, and as of now, I do not fully intend on keeping it up as a career choice; even though I have had space and rocketry around me my whole life. Thanks, dad! Something I painfully learnt is to never say no. I hope to keep chugging on with rocketry and see where it takes me, I don’t know, 6 months down the line.