In the 1960s people asked why a poor country needed rockets. Sarabhai's answer was that space was a tool, for weather, communication and education, not a race.
India's first rocket was launched from Thumba, near Thiruvananthapuram. The local church became the office, and rocket parts were famously moved on bicycles and a bullock cart.
He also helped found IIM Ahmedabad and several other institutions, and he picked and trusted young people, including a young A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. He died suddenly at 52, but the institutions he built kept going.