Category: Uncategorized

  • Chai and Why?: Genetricks

    Today was the first time that I went to Ruparel College for a session of Chai and Why?, TIFR’s public outreach programme (fascinatingly, they have a Facebook page but nothing on their own website!). This one was titled, “GENETrICkS” and was given by Sonal on developmental genetics.

    After a description of basic genetics and the wonderful play of the genes that gives rise to the field of developmental genetics Sonal went into the fascinating “fluorescent revolution in biology”. What this did was make her study of genes much easier. She also described the brainbow mouse which is definitely worth searching and reading through.

    The TIFR team also announced the up and coming Chai and Whys. The next one is titled “Mathematics and Origami”. This is on May 1 which has this phrase inserted –

    and in practical applications such as unfolding space telescopes and solar sails

    which makes me really itch and want to go! 

  • First Report on Space Tourism in India

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on April 5, 2011. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    Clark Lindsey posted on his RLV and Space Transport blog yesterday about this first report on space tourism in India. The report is brought out by the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES) and McGill University. I had a cursory glance through this report and given below are my thoughts about this report.

    The Report is done by a University (UPES) which you would not equate with space. It is done by the Center for Aviation Studies and released by a Secretary in the Civil Aviation Ministry. Again, not really showing involvement from anyone in the space business in India today. This makes it a tad difficult to understand their background with relation to this subject.

    The Report itself is in an interesting format. It puts out the condition in the US and compares the same with the Indian situation and draws unfortunate parallels. For example, it talks about building spaceports merely by extending airports. It even talks about DGCA playing a role similar to what the FAA does in the USA.

    The Report is perhaps a first that is publicly released and perhaps lays the foundation for in-depth topic specific reports on various aspects of space tourism. There have been interesting suggestions for space tourism vehicles based out of India – as an example Earth2Orbit’s Sushmita Mohanty suggested developing the Space ReEntry Experiment vehicle(SRE)  as a space tourism vehicle out of India. Such bold suggestions were not studied or considered during the course of this report. It also depended rather heavily on the US scenario and did not envisage anything from the Indian perspective which could have made it a more worthwhile report rather than trying to make it an Indian copy of a US model.

    India has many interesting alternatives. Entrepreneurial companies like Team Indus and Earth2Orbit are sprouting in India which could develop and improve SREs or even totally new ventures developing rockets and crafts that could handle the technology aspect. A Space Transportation Authority could be setup coming out of the current Launch Authorisation Board from within ISRO. There is already an Indian expecting to fly in SpaceShipTwo.

    All in all, I think that the report is an important first step which was not bold enough and forward thinking enough but which I hope pushes many more studies and public interest in the idea of space tourism.

  • National Conference on Electric Propulsion

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on December 31, 2010 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    The Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre is hosting the National Conference on Electric Propulsion [PDF]. This is a 2 day conference to be held between 23 and 24 February 2011. Last date of reciept of abstract is January 10, 2011.

    India tried entering the electric propulsion age with a station keeping system on GSAT-4 which was lost on the GSLV flight in April, 2010

  • What makes you special?

    Read that on the cover of my new IBM notebook, which I plan to use starting September 26.

  • My Days at SEDS

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.org/blog. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on April 9, 2009 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    In about a month or two, I will graduate from college and will head out to follow a career path that I hope will some day lead me to the door steps of ISRO. As one of the co-starters of SEDS in India, I thought you may be interested in sharing the journey of SEDS till date. My passion for outer space started way back when I was 13 years old and I have been smitten ever since. Despite the best efforts from several people, I have not been able to go off the path of space sciences. At age 17, sitting in an internet cafe, looking for a space organisation, the first one that came up was Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS).

    I was able to find several amateur astronomy clubs in India but none that were dedicated to space engineering. I learnt however that some did exist but I seemed to have been not patient enough to find them. I shared my concern on the forums of SEDS and there was able to meet several people who convinced me that I can be the right person to start the Indian extension of SEDS. While I remained non-commital, I was introduced to Abhishek Ray who seems to have found out about SEDS in the same way and had expressed the same interest.

    So, way back in late 2004 and early 2005, with a simple forums announcment, we got started with SEDS in India. We started off with perhaps 10 members or so. Even with such humble beginnings the dreams of two late teens clashed with what SEDS could be or do in India. We both felt that the ultimate thrill would be for ISRO to some day come to us looking for great leaders who could lead their projects and missions. What a thrill that would be!

    Things did get difficult from there on and we had a lean patch where SEDS was not doing much and we were mostly co-ordinating and working towards an international SEDS organisation than building anything here in India. Throughout this phase of SEDS in India, I would like to specially point to the help provided by Kirk Kittell, then a Vice Chair at SEDS USA.

    Enter Pranav Aggrawal and the chapter at Vellore Institute of Technology University. After failing with a two chapter model, we thought of putting all efforts into building one chapter properly that could then serve as an example for several other chapters across the country. By working on one chapter with effective results we thought that this could help people understand our work better and also aid forming chapters.

    With this intention most of 2007 and 2008 was spent building up the chapter of SEDS at VIT University. This was an era of several wonderful conversations and idea storms that I shared with Pranav Aggrawal and we are still a bit sad that we were not able to implement many of the ideas that we did have. Perhaps, the SEDS International Conference 2007 hosted by VIT University was the time that SEDS in India stepped up and did what several people still reminiscense as a wonderful conference.

    There, for perhaps the first time, we brought to India, the Moon Rover Design Competition and water rocket competitions. It was a great joy for us to the wonderful turnout that we had and the grand success that the event was.

    The event also got us attention to what SEDS was and as to the projects and events that we had done. At this point, we discovered that having a big successful chapter can also work in another way, to make new chapters worry about their success or failiure. In 2007, we began efforts to streamline the organisation, get it registered and to begin expanding to younger chapters.

    Several innovative solutions were brought to the table by the founding Executive Committee members (Anmol Sharma, Snehal Deshpande, Krishna Mohanty, Ashish Aggrawal being the chief among them) and several others who worked with and under us during the period. We developed solutions that would I think help us in the future as the organisation grows and spreads across India.

    An organisation that started with a dream has now got some very practical implementations for the way we work – the activities that we choose to do and the implementation of our projects. We hope we can continuously improve and be more effective than we have been.

    In 2009, Snehal Deshpande and Krishna Mohanty and others at the chapter in VITU, worked hard to bring to fruition the SEDS India National Conference (SINC 2009). Here too we brought the cansat competition for the first time in India, got all the small satellite developers from across India at a venue (thanks to ISRO  and specially, Dr. Raghava Murthy for this), math modelling etc. We hope to do much better in 2010. There are many projects already planned and several that we are still brainstorming. For the new chapters, I hope this is a great opportunity and for VIT, perhaps a caution that we have only covered a small distance in the vast ocean.

    To conclude, I would like to thank several people who have helped me in starting and getting SEDS up on its feet – Kirk Kittell, Pranav Aggrawal and Abhishek Ray. There have also been people that each of these individuals including me reached out to – brothers, friends, professors etc who have advised us and kept us going. I also hope that the future members of SEDS remember all these people who helped set up the organisation and worked hard to contribute to what it has become today.

    Thanks for being a part of this journey and I hope that while I hand over this mantle to the next generation they will take SEDS to great heights and perhaps one day even to another planet or even another star :).

  • How can youth be more proactive in helping shape our space programme?

    This article originally appeared on my blog http://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the post using Wayback Machine.

    Bijal Thakore, recently on the Planetary Society board, asked people: How can youth be more proactive in helping shape our space programs? This is not really an exact reply to that question but is a first general hit in that direction. Let’s see where the thought process goes.

    1. Outreach is a good place to start and learn things that you don’t know about. It’s also a good way to show people in space missions/projects etc. how passionate you are on a subject or in a field. I believe that is the extent to which outreach can be pushed. It gives you a sense of recognition for your passion.
    2. The second thing to get involved – specially students is to understand their own country’s space policy. Organisations like SEDS, Planetary Society etc. can bring this closer to the people by breaking down such policy into things which today’s youth can understand and offer implications of these actions on them.
    3. The third thing is to get involved in projects. Projects are much better way to understand the complexities that a space scientist faces during his design and fabrication. Taking part in a project is also a good excuse for an educational institution to develop their own infrastructure. But it does take a lot of effort and hard work, but it’s fun.
    4. The fourth thing is events. These are the best platforms to showcase what you have done in your sphere of interest. It is also a place to make the public involved in your activities and even if just for a moment, to share the thrill that members of organisations get to have daily. This is also a place where organisations grow with people wanting to have the thrill for the rest of the year and possibly, rest of their life time.

    All in all, this is not a complete roadmap to changing around a space programme into a direction where timelines can crushed to get things done faster. This is just enough to get a swell of ground support so that what you do matters to people with power and money to get your work done.

  • The world from

    Just a test post from my cell phone.

  • imagiNATION

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on September 17, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    A pass time that I cultivated long ago in the hope of expressing my skills in geography, civics and science is called imagiNATION. That’s short for imaginary nation. It also expresses that the nation is part of that person’s imagination. Two of my cousins and my brother also have their imagiNATIONs.

    My brother took the name Elvenia because his birthday falls on the 11th of December and also because he’s fascinated by elves.

    I stand by a name that came to me on a geometry box that my father brought for me. My imagiNATION is called Helix.

     

    Helix

    Helix (There was a MS Paint generated map here that is forever lost?)

    These nations actually refine themselves as one matures. You can keep on adding new innovations there and use it as a playground for testing something that needs to be done in the real world.I also plan to write an imaginary travelogue. Has anyone tried one?

  • IHY/IPY

    And so, I enter another adventure. I have decided to help  Kirk with the SEDS IHY/IPY blog humourously (according to me) called Frozen Sun. I have just sent out a mail to the SEDS-Earth and SG Talk list with respect to this. So, thought I should post a snippet of it here too:

    hi all,

    We have started a blog called Frozen Sun to celebrate the International
    Heliophysical and Polar Years. You can find the blog here -
    http://blogs.seds.org/frozensun/

    We'd like people working in fields related to these fields to share
    they're work with students like me so that we know more about what you do.
    We don't want exact technical details of your project. We'd like to know
    how you spend your time there, how's the pay and maybe a sketch of what
    you're doing there technically. You're free to write in proportions of
    what you do in the way you like.

    You can do this using plain old text, images or even videos.

    Oh! and just so that you know what you're getting into, you won't be let
    off the hook after you post. Students will read your post, ask you
    questions and we would be greatful if you could answer them.

    expecting a good response,
    Pradeep

    Help in anyway is appreciated.

    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
  • 
		
		
    
			
			
    March 27, 2007
    
			
    

    Yesterday’s note was short. No particular reason for that.
    




    If you have really read the notes till date there is hardly any mention of my academics. I just skipped it, I guess. Well, there’s nothing fascinating about it other than the fact that it’s the most time consuming thing. All for that degree which really does not ensure secure knowledge, only a secure job.
    




    Odd thought: The world was wired and then it became weird.
    




    My brother’s exams start tommorrow. Best of luck!
    




    Kathy Siera (of Creating Passionate Users), whose blog I was introduced to by Scoble, has been getting death threats. Just shows how we’re still savages inside, doesn’t it? The blogosphere has been abuzz with the story.
    




    The above is something, I guess that the Indian bloggers might face. If you wanna kill me, go ahead.
    




    Rahul and others have gone to Kerala for an Industrial Visit.
    




    Things are finally moving ahead vis-a-vis SEDSAT 2. Our first meeting will be at 8 pm local time. I really doubt myself as a team leader but I have the best team and support that I could’ve asked for. Though, things were beginning to get crazy in between. In such times, I just do things that you can’t live without – bathing, eating etc…- and things, generally go back to normal, as it did today.
    




    I put together my webpage today at http://pradeep.mohandas.googlepages.com/home. Quite a mouthful isn’t it?
    




    I am beginning to design and think simple. It helps.