flying high...world without borders

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Home> Delhi> Page One Sunday , February 25, 2007 PAGE ONE ‘We must remember to have a world without borders’ Sunita Williams gives a few tips to students of city schools from the International Space Station Neha Sinha New Delhi, February 24: I just crossed the India-Pakistan border and it was fun.” That was astronaut Sunita Williams, the second woman of Indian origin to go into space, at 2.25 pm today, speaking from the International Space Station to students of the Vasant Valley School in Delhi. [] In that eager audience were two children she shares a special relationship with — the nephew and niece of friend Kalpana Chawla, who died in the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster on February 1, 2004. Vasant Valley was only one of the four schools in the world to have an audio-conference with those on the space station. Students came from schools all over the city city to listen in. Calling Vasant Valley a “great school” — she had visited it in March 2003 — Williams (41answered questions on subjects ranging from physics to biomechanics. She explained to students what happens to a bullet fired in space and what her fitness levels were. “We do a lot of things, but it is very important to be fit. We must exercise everyday. We must also remember to have a world without borders,” Williams said. The astronaut, of Gujarati descent, had flow to the station on the shuttle Discovery in December. Sanjay Chawla, Kalpana Chawla’s brother, and his children Megha (Class X) and Udai (Class VII), said it was a “an emotional moment”. The kids had gone to the US to interact with Kalpana before she left on the Columbia. Today, when they asked questions to Sunita while she traveled in space, it was a familiar situation for all of us, which the kids miss,” Chawla said. It was no less enthralling for the others, speaking to someone “out there”. “I don’t want to become an astronaut,” says Aditya Malhotra, who had come from Sanskriti School. “But I would like to go to Neptune as no one wants to go there! I want to become a sportsperson and I liked what she said about fitness being all important,” he added. Others were ready to follow in Sunita’s footsteps. “I want to go to Pluto to prove it is a planet” said Varad Narayan, a Class V student of Vasant Valley school. “Setting up the equipment for conducting the conversation took a lot of preparation. We had to get the stuff from the market and start from scratch,” said Vasant Valley director Arun Kapur. This is not the school’s first brush with space activity though. “In 1997, we sent up the school flag on a shuttle, which Kalpana Chawla organised for us,” said Kapur. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ya sure.. a world without borders sure would be nice we wont be fighting for place food or water will we? sathya

Oh yeah, the world will be abetter place to live in if that happens.
nice article, Sathya.
Sriniketan

hi all,

indeed a good post.

if anyone can post, how they manage to live in space - what to they eat, drink and other basic things we do on earth everyday.

how do they exercise, when there is no gravity?

regards,

vanaja

hello sri and sri v

now that sunita is back
we should ask her
how what and why
about space travel...

sathya