15-year-old recounts Nasa experience

Updated on: Monday, July 19, 2010

It was a dream come true for 15-year-old Sayantan Bhattacharya of Behrampore’s Gorabazar. Having won top awards in the Nasa Space Settlement Design Contest twice — the first prize in the Class IV-IX category in 2009 and the second prize in the Class X-XII category in 2010 — he could finally attend the conference in Chicago and collect his certificate from Nasa this year.

“I went with my mentor and teacher Santanu Roy to New York and then to Chicago in May. There was a conference at Rosemont’s Hotel InterContinental on international space development,” said Sayantan, a student at Behrampore Geetanath Academy.

During the five-day International Space Development Conference in Chicago held from May 27 to May 31, Sayantan presented the space city he had designed in front of an audience comprising internationally acclaimed scientists and researchers from Nasa and other eminent institutes across the globe.

Recalling his experience, Sayantan said: “I told the audience that in my space city, there cannot be homes like the ones on earth. The space city will look like a cycle. The axis of the cycle, which is the centrifugal force, will create artificial gravity. The homes will resemble honeycombs. Transportation will be by supersonic magnetic levitation trains.”

Since no food can be cooked in the space station and preserving food will escalate costs, Sayantan suggests that capsules be given to the space city dwellers which will constitute all the major nutrients required to survive. “This will also ensure low waste production,” he points out.

To protect the city from asteroids and meteors, Sayantan suggests laser-tracking ballistic missiles. “The laser beams will identify the location of any obstacle approaching the city. A computer will constantly monitor movements. Once a meteor or asteroid comes too close, self-guided missiles with censors will be launched,” he explains.

The conference has taught the teenager a lot, he says. “We exchanged ideas with so many scientists and heard about new technologies. I learnt about the jet propulsion technology. Nasa is trying to introduce human colonisation of other planets. A colony of human beings will come up soon in Mars. The competition was held to hunt for new ideas, technologies and new talents,” he says.

Sayantan was also taken on a tour of the Fermi National Laboratory in Chicago and the Argonne National Laboratory. “They showed us the particle accelerators. We were given new ideas about quantum physics and shown experiments. I could interact with scientists working at the space station,” he smiled.

Sayantan’s trip to the US was sponsored by the SBI after reading a TOI article.

15-year-old recounts Nasa experience

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