New Delhi:
When we were kids, we used to weave many tales and dreams around the Moon, however never pursued them. Meet Sai Kiran P, an 18-year-old boy from Chennai, who has won the NASA ‘Moon’ prize for proposing an elevator from Earth to the Moon, making a human settlement possible on Earth’s natural satellite.
So far, interplanetary travel and life on other planets is only seen in sci-fi movies. But Sai Kiran has proposed this idea and has built a complete proposal around connecting the Earth with the Moon using elevators.
For his unique proposal, Sai Kiran has bagged second position in the grade 12 category of the NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest, 2017.
NASA Ames Research Center, San Jose State University, and the National Space Society (NSS) had organised the annual contest, in which Sai Kiran was a contestant. Entries from across the world, only up to 12th grade, were invited for the contest for designing proposed human settlements on the Moon.
According to Sai Kiran, the construction of elevators between the Earth and the moon is possible and will also be cost-effective way towards human settlement on the moon.
The teenage, who is a student of British International School in Chennai, has titled the proposal as 'Connecting Moon, Earth and Space' and ‘HUMEIU Space Habitats'. It aims at transporting the humans to moon and eventually settling them there.
Sai Kiran had been working on this project since 2013 when he was residing in Singapore. After moving to Chennai, India, he began writing the thesis in March last year.
"The first segment of the project is about creating elevators that could transport humans and cargo to the Moon so that humans can form their settlements there. The most important aspect was that of gravity as without gravity, humans won’t be able to settle there," he was quoted as saying by Deccan Chronicle.
Why he wants to construct elevators between the two bodies? Because his idea is to save the monetary costs incurred in sending humans via rockets.
He says thorough studies are required before creating the elevators, that could be either lunar-based or earth-based.
"Since it is not economically viable, the only other way is to have faultless elevators connecting the Earth to the Moon, which will span a height of 40,000kms," he said.
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His proposal about human settlement on the moon also includes the ideas of setting up recreation, entertainment, governance and agriculture there.
Apart from Sai Kiran, around 138 students of different grades from India won prizes in various categories in the contest.
