How to be a space cadet

From being ‘starry-eyed and weak at the knees’ at the opportunity of meeting ISRO scientists to shamelessly asking for a job there, here’s a list of ‘must-have’ traits to qualify as a space cadet.

1. Get all starry-eyed and weak at the knees when given the opportunity to go to Bengaluru and meet scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation.

2. Text all your friends, while on national roaming, that you're going to the Deep Space Network facility, ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, I feel like I'm in a movie!

3. Restrain yourself with great difficulty from continuously orbiting the control room at the Mission Operations Centre - you know, that room with all those big displays of amazing things happening in outer space and banks of computers with earnest, focused people hunched over them, monitoring signals and sending commands and doing all sorts of cool things.

4. Know from the depths of your soul that ISRO scientists are the biggest rock stars. If they ran the country, you'd never worry.

5. Get excited when shown a completely empty 'clean room' where spacecraft are assembled. So what if there's nothing there now. Once, this room contained the Mars Orbiter Mission.

6. Be very disappointed that you can't actually set your watch to the time displayed by the atomic clock.

7. Solemnly inform your scientist guide that your appointment at the Indian Satellite Centre requires a course correction because your hired car driver is late.

8. Shamelessly ask if you could work at ISRO, even if it just means making tea.

From HT Brunch, December 15

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