Terrific 10 from Bangalore off to NASA to conquer the final frontier

For Class 12 students—Anil Agarwal, Aravind Sarangapaani, Debarun Dhar, Isaac John, Janardhan Mahadev, Pranav Shankar, Shivam Gaur, Shubham Joshi, Srikant Salecha and Tejas V Rai, months of hard work – when they stayed back after school hours and worked on their project—has finally paid off.

The boys from Bishop Cotton Boys’ School are off to Houston, USA, to take part in the finals of the Space Settlement Design Competition organised by National Space Society (NSS) and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

The young lads, who had done their school proud by winning the Asian championship in the semi-final round, will now be heading to Johnson Space Camp in Houston, USA to participate in the finals to be held from July 29th to August 1st 2011.

The industry space settlement design competition is an industry simulation requiring students to put themselves in the shoes of aerospace industry engineers designing a city in space that will be a home for over 10,000 people.

‘Student engineers’, demonstrate creativity, technical competence, management skills, space environment knowledge, teamwork, and presentation techniques to conquer the problems inherent in sitting and designing a space settlement also known as space colony.

As contractors, each of them will take on a role, based on their strengths, to be a structural engineer, architect or those looking into automation or human factors.

Asha Balaji, head of the department of physics and electronics, said the whole process had been extremely beneficial for the students.

“Academically they get to apply a number of concepts they learn. Secondly, they learn team work and working under pressure. It has helped a lot in enhancing their self- confidence as well,” she said.

In the first round, the students had to send a 40-page proposal, which they did last August. A presentation round was held in February in Gurgaon, where the students had to design a shuttle service between Earth and Mars which they called ‘Cassandras’ in 23 hours. The students, who are raring to go, call their team Rockdonnell.

This will be the first time students of BCBS will be participating in the finals, although they have been participating in the competition for the past four years.