Winners of 28th theme:My First Flight To Space

1st: Ashley Tan Yi-Shien, 12, TKGS

My Little Dream to Space

“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Was the famous quote that was said when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. From a young age, the moon, astronauts and space had always fascinated me. So sometimes, I would just sit in my room and daydream about my flight to space.

“ Recruits, we are planning to set off to orbit around the moon and space in a month. Since all of you have been chosen for this flight, I trust that you know how important preparing is.” The captain in charge said to us. I nodded along with the rest, trying to look serious, but on the inside I was bursting with excitement. I was honoured to be chosen to go on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and really couldn’t wait.

So for the next month, we had lots of preparations, although they were quite scary at times, I actually enjoyed them after awhile. My favourite one was when we went into a room and they would just switch off the gravity and we would just float around. Although it was a bit weird at first, I slowly became comfortable with the weightless feeling. We had lots of lessons too, like what to do if you ran out of oxygen, how to fix minor things on the rocket, and what to do in an emergency. We also had a lot of physical training, as going to space was not something for the weak-hearted. After all the tests, trainings, preparations were done, we got ready for the flight.

We were actually going to orbit around the moon, then land on one of the smaller planets there. I really could not wait. One month’s worth of training comes down to this, I really hope that I will not freak out and mess things up!

The day had finally come! We quickly put on our spacesuits and boarded the rocket. Lots of people came to see us off; we waved at all of them then set off.

The entire flight was amazing! I saw the moon with my very own eyes, and it was much bigger than when I saw it on earth, and it was very beautiful too! The planet that we had stopped on was supposed to be about the same size as the moon, but it felt a lot smaller as we only landed on one part of the planet, there was no gravity, so we could float and jump around. It was really fun I really enjoyed the floating feeling and was sad to leave. Now walking normally on earth is going to feel so boring after this, I thought to myself.

As we were slowly making our decent, I thought about the whole thrilling experience. I have really learnt a lot of new things, made new friends with the other recruits, my, normal life seems so uninteresting now!

We had just landed, and when we got out, we were greeted by the sounds of people cheering at us. I was basking in the praises when I heard a voice

“Dinner!” It was my mother. Rats! Sadly this was just a dream I have to go back and face reality.

2nd: Cheyanne Sim, 15, TKGS

 Spacecraft

For more than 50 years, I was an engineer, working with designing planes and the mechanisms in them. I loved this job a lot as every plane was different, and they can lead to new innovations and inspirations. Every day was a challenge to me, as there were different problems in different planes. We engineers have to put our brains together to create new solutions. We had to be alert at all times and be creative.

After every new inventions and changes we make to the plane, we had to make test flights. Although this may sacrifice our lives, we did not mind at all, as this is the only way we can ensure the passengers’ safety, and to improve the plane from best to perfect. I miss those feelings of fear and anxiousness, and the feeling of tension and stress when things go wrong, but I’m over and done with everything and I’m too old in serve as an engineer.

However there are moments that I reminiscence, when we are given the craziest and the biggest project—well that was what I thought. It was to create a spacecraft. We had never handled a spacecraft before, and there are so few of them that we couldn’t excess to one for reference, neither are we experienced. We had no idea how were we supposed to invent a spacecraft. We did numerous research and different drawings and designs, so that it is suitable for long hours of flight. The inventing process was long, and the mechanism part was confusing. We had to consider different factors of the possibilities of failures, and these processes took more than two years.

After the actual model and invention was confirmed, we started finding suitable materials to build it. Every single parts of the spacecraft was handmade, all of the hundreds of people of hard work. This spacecraft is now known as the Space Shuttle.

As the leader of the group, I was notified that me, together with five other people were given the privilege to ‘enjoy’ the flight test. Well enjoy is not the right word to use. Obviously we were not confident that the spacecraft would work. We may not survive it. Although it had passed all the safety checks, no one would volunteer to go. No one showed strong interest in going on this flight.

I did not regret going onto the spacecraft. It was the best experience in my life. We get to experience the only kind of food that can be eaten. After some time on the spacecraft, we find our faces slightly bloated, and before we knew, we were floating in the air. I know what you think, we sound like we are helium balloons, but no. It was just that there was the drastic drop of pressure in the air and the gravitational pull. We could apply all physics that we know as an engineer, and make improvements after we were done with this mission.

We are not the professional astronauts and what we were doing was just to enjoy the taste of an astronaut’s career and testing that the Space Shuttle. So what we were given was to land on the moon and get back to Earth.

On the moon, we see so many craters on the ground, everything was unbelievable. It feels like fantasy. While I was reading science fictions, everything felt untrue, but now my eyes had convinced myself.

The scene was so beautiful, and we were nearer to the star clusters, and we had some star gazing. This tells me that we had succeeded in this invention and this mission. All our hard work had paid off. Although this was a short journey, I would never had touched the moon or go to the space, if I wasn’t and engineer. I felt privileged. I was one of the trillions of the people who had visited the space.

Now we know that the spacecraft was safe, more people can visit the moon and enjoy their journey. After the visit, I decided to end my career of an engineer, and stepped down for someone else, to make a better spacecraft.

3rd: Shruti Ravindran, 15, TKGS

A New Home

The Earth was once a place full of green grass and huge mountains and blue skies. The sight was heavenly. However, that beautiful sight no longer existed and no one could remember how it looked anymore. The once blue skies had turned to the colour of ash. The air no longer smelt fresh, instead only the smell of polluted and poisonous gases let out by industries filled the air. There were no longer any junkyards as the streets became one.

The news reported the deaths of about 100 people a day around the world. Their deaths caused by their surrounding environment. Sunlight was no longer known to the humans as the clouds were so filthy that sun rays could no longer pass through them. In order to survive, people had to buy fresh air and fresh water from normal shops which would be sold as capsules.

The entire world was in ruins. Finally the United Nations made a decision to start a cleaning operation on earth, called- ‘Operation Earth’. It was the 30^th of December, the day of the start of the operation. Mammoth machines were moving around and clearing the huge piles of junk on every street. Aircrafts were high up in the sky busy trying to clean up the air above and remove the dense filth that filled the smoky dark grey clouds.

The humans had been evacuated out of Earth and into their temporary planet, Mars. It was like a sweet escape from the terrible earth they lived in. As the spaceship took off, it trembled violently and everyone was scared and their hearts pounded heavily against their chest. The spaceship finally left earth and was in space. It was the most peaceful journey for two best friends, Mark and Sam. They were 15 years old and were unfortunately orphans. They boarded the giant spaceship and gazed around. Their jaws dropped in awe as they had never ever seen such a huge machine and were fascinated by it.

The sight of the earth from space was a pitiful one as there were no longer bright colours on the Earth, only dull ones. However, space was an absolute contrast to Earth. It was colourful with bright meteors which were seen as stars from Earth. The stars no longer looked far away neither did it look small. They were humongous. The planets were like gigantic glow bulbs. The sun looked like a massive ball on fire. The boys put their hands against the glass of the spaceship and enjoyed the darkness outside which had many bright spots. They found that they were peering into a peaceful environment, so silent and yet so beautiful.

However, this calm moment of theirs was soon interrupted by a flashing big meteor heading towards the spaceship. Everyone was shrieking with fear. There was absolute havoc. Terror and fear had conquered the hearts of many. Sadly, the pilot was not able to get the spaceship out of the way of the incoming blazing meteor. Everyone’s heart stopped as it was just a little distance that separated the meteor from the spaceship, a fine line between life and death. Everyone’s hands gripped the handle of the chair tightly and at that point of time prayers were said.

However, just at the nick of time, the tense pilot launched a missile at the meteor. The meteor exploded just before it could have collided against the spaceship. The explosion was massive with bright colours shooting out all around.  It was the most beautiful sight anyone could have witnessed. The boys felt as though they were in watching a scientific fiction film. Finally, everyone took in a breath and became calm again.

After a few days the space ship reached Mars and all the passengers alighted. They were finally happy to be on ground, having spent days in the spaceship. The boys looked around but were too tired. They thought it would be nice to get back to earth after the UN would have cleaned it up, as there is nothing better than home sweet home.