FUTURISTIC DESIGNS
A group of city students recently brought home laurels from Nasa for designing models for space settlement
Imagine a situation where the Earth is slowly perishing due to rising pollution and people are boarding rockets and flying off to outer space. That was the theme behind the recently held annual worldwide contest by Nasa Ames Research Centre, California, San Jose State University, and the National Space Society (NSS), where students had to design a model for space settlement. A group of Class IX students from Ravindra Bharathi School, Dilsukhnagar and Veerla Vikas, a student of Narayana IIT Olympiad School, Meerpet won the first prize in different categories.
“The school informed us about the contest and teams of two to five individuals, and teams of six or more were judged in different categories. Students had to develop space settlement designs and the projects were then sent to NASA Ames for judgement,” says Vikas, the Class IX student and winner of Artistic merit first prize. Vikas made a painting to show how the Earth is suffering and how people are flying away to space settlements in a rocket. “I was always inclined towards painting and when I got this opportunity, I let my imagination take flight. It was a surprise that my painting beat all the entries from around the world,” adds Vikas. Space settlements are permanent communities in orbit, as opposed to living on the Moon or other planets. “The settlements should have all the amenities like schools, hospitals and roads,” explains Bandaru Hemanth Krishna, a member of the winning team ‘Tectum’ from Ravindra Bharathi School. “‘Tectum’ means shelter in Latin and we thought it was a perfect name for our settlement. The last two months were a life changing experience. I am more inclined towards space studies now and hope to work for Nasa one day,” he adds.
“We brainstormed about the structure, what gravity defying materials can be used and also how the structure can be made strong enough to hold a community within,” shares Rahul Roshan Pepeli, another teammate. As for the future, Hemanth will concentrate on physics and space studies, while Rahul plans to become a cardiologist. Their teammates, Puneeth Kumar Singhania wants to make it to IIT and Gurram Mahanth Reddy aims to be a chemical scientist.