Bored of Digha and Mandamoni? Well, how about a trip to space? A Class VII student not just prepared a report on a hotel in space but also won an award for it from the National Space Society, US.
The “space settlement contest” was run by NASA Ames Research Center till 2018 but is now hosted by the National Space Society, US. This year they received entries from over 17,000 students from 22 countries. Students were free to choose from topics such as asteroid mining and building space hotels and were judged within their age group as well as overall.
Elahe Gupta, now in Class VIII of Sri Chaitanya Techno School, New Town, has won second prize among all students in her age group. The results were announced recently and the girl was felicitated by her school.
“The hotel would not be on any planet but be floating in the low earth orbit (LEO) portion of space. It is a region not too far from earth and so would be convenient for human tourists to travel to,” says Elahe. Given the constant radiation in space, the structure would not be of brick and mortar either. “I shall use carbon nano tubes, kelvar fibres and lead glass that will withstand the forces of nature.”
Elahe’s school takes this annual contest very seriously; this year their nation-wide chain of schools has received 66 prizes in all although Elahe was the only one from the east zone to bag a prize. Students had a mentor Venkararamana — a faculty of Sri Chaitanya Techno School and himself the holder of an MSC degree in space physics — conducting multiple online classes for the students to guide them. “He especially helped us overcome problems like the lack of gravity and water in space. For instance, I chose to use rotational gravity to tackle the gravity problem and Sabatier reaction to produce water,” says Elahe, who also thanks her physics teacher Amit Kumar Singh and parents.
In fact, her parents had paid the Rs 10,000 registration fee for entering the contest on September 15 last year. “That’s my birthday and it was my birthday gift from my parents,” she smiles.
Elahe did not delve further into the math or physics of her plans unlike senior students. She relied on creativity. For instance, the dog lover decided to name the hotel Just Laika Star, a wordplay on Laika, the Russian dog who became the first animal to orbit the earth on Sputnik 2.
The young resident of Sanjeeva Town has two dogs herself and has not been on many holidays as pet-friendly transport and accommodation are not easily available. “So the space hotel will certainly be a pet-friendly one and families with rescued pets will get discounts in memory of Laika, who was a street dog,” she smiles. The hotel will also be open to conferences, sports tournaments and destination weddings.
Elahe moved to her current school during the pandemic and it’s only now that she is getting to meet her classmates in person. The contest result seems to have been an ice-breaker to making new friends. “I love making bhais and bons and some of them, like Harshit Kumar Singh of Class VII, came forward, congratulated me for the award and asked me to be their didi!” says the girl who is usually quite shy.
In fact, she broke into tears when asked to speak to the school at her felicitation. But she remembers how her principal Ahanjit Chandra Routh asked the audience who wants to be like Elahe and so many of them raised their hands.
Elahe likes English, mathematics, biology and history and though she is not sure what she wants to become when she grows up, she knows that she wants: “to look after people and animals.”
