Parallel Spirals

Standing on the shores of space-time…

Blog

  • Where does Mumbai get its water from?

    I’m in the middle of various changes in lifestyle which I’m trying to
    make consciously. Today, I thought I needed a good dock to start out
    from and could think of no better place than Mumbai. I’m now out
    asking the question: Where does Mumbai get its water from?

    Over the next few days when I get the time, I will re visit this topic
    here. I will try and document this journey as much as possible.

    I see this as possibly a first step in answering the question of
    rethinking the way mega cities and at the micro level consume water so
    that we can get water conservation measures out of the clean the
    beaches and close the tap mode.

  • Water in the City

    Amazing how little we know about how we get the water we use in our homes.

  • Loss of Water Supply

    Imagine you live in a traditional village which has shared water with
    neighbouring villages, towns and cities for a century. This year was
    nasty and the water board is still pumping out water because those
    freak in the cities don’t see or ignore the lakes falling water level.
    Five years pass and people in your village die because of water abuse
    of your lake by others. The only step then remaining is fortifying the
    water source and levying a larger charge for geting the water. This is
    a possible situation we could be headed towards.

    Unlike computers and electricity, mechanical pipes don’t lend
    themselves to a very high transport efficiency. Precious water is lost
    in every pipe bend, valve, leak and pumping losses. Transporting water
    over large distances is not efficient.

  • Getting Students Interested in LARS

    A key pre-requisite to starting a lunar simulation project is to have
    enough people interested in it. The Chandrayaan mission has piqued
    media interest in the Moon.

    However, people still look at it through mysterious eyes. People think
    Apollo 11 was a hoax. They don’t know that 12 people have gone to the
    Moon. Even the amateur astronomy community does not know of many lunar
    features on the Moon.

    Under such circumstances, it is useful to get students interested.
    Accordingly, we plan to unveil a series of events and mini projects to
    get things going. The announcements begin on October 4.

  • Lunar Analog Research Station – India

    My first knowledge of an analog research station was Arctic Mars
    Analog Station Expedition or AMASE. A thought process carried forward
    with Flashline Mars Analog Research station or FMARS. The Moon Miners
    Manifesto’s India Quarterly expanded on the theme and brought the
    subject of a similar station for the Moon in India at the backdrop of
    the Chandrayaan series of missions to the Moon.

    I became a member of the Moon Society this summer and have begun
    planing on what can eventually be a lunar research station in India.

    I am still reading through papers and worrying about geting people
    on-board before begining the actual effort. I’m also working out a
    simultaneous outreach and education effort that will focus on the
    Chandrayaan series and serve the project’s basis.

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  • Water

    My fascination for water started with the lines in my science text
    book urging me to drink 8 to 13 glasses of water everyday. I follow
    this naturally because I do get thirsty alot.

    Fast forward to my under graduate years and it amazes me that we still
    use the same 100 odd year old system to bring water from catchment
    areas to meet requirements of the city. Innovation has worked only in
    bringing water more efficiently in the old system.

    Today, we face a water shortage. Would not people staying closer to
    the water source claim ownership and sell water to her neighbours than
    allow its citizens to die?

    An analogy is supplying water to a colony on the Moon.

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  • Hello World!

    I find that I blog little and little and so this sounded something worth looking at. This is my first test post. You can follow the updates on http://pradx.posterous.com. Thanks.

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  • What next after SEDS?

    As I said in an earlier blog, my journey with SEDS has been great. As a student organisation, it does face some limits because of exams, the 3 to 4 year renewal cycle and several other things, but with enthusiastic students, everything’s easy to overcome. 

    This question has been plaguing my mind – what next? It’s easy to say that I’ll have to set it aside till I graduate but this only makes it more difficult for me to concentrate on my studies. So, its best to get it out of the way once and for all by doing.

    So, that’s what I’ll be doing over the next few days while copying my submission work 🙂

  • 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 :).

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  • Posting in the 100 Hours of Astronomy Blog

    I was asked by Mr. Manoj Pai (Secretary, CIAA) to make a blog contribution to the 100 Hours of Astronomy blog from India. I put up my first posting today. Do read it and let me know what you think. 

    I was thinking of a better title but didn’t get there. Enjoy it!

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