My first Flight and first research paper

Flying has been the fascination of mankind from time immemorial. Aeroplanes have been my fascination since my childhood. Naturally the first flight is an exciting experience, especially since I come from a middle class family where people rarely fly. So I was fairly excited when I was informed that I would be flying to Port Blair and back on two of the world's best selling aircraft.

But the entire episode is not without irony. Normally people see very little when they fly on an aircraft. Neither do they see the type of aircraft they are on nor do they see the ground below. I, being a student of photogrammetry, could not, in the least, forget to observe the ground below (in 3D of course). Even more importantly I could neither forget to see the aircraft because I have just finished a research paper on a futuristic aircraft design with one of my seniors and have submitted it to a NASA competition. And as if all this compulsion were not enough I won a prize for it too! (You can see the abstract of the paper here and the result declaration on this NASA page)

So as a result of all this compulsion to perform and of course a (hell) lot of fascination, it inclines me to think that a series of blogs on my most overwhelming experience on board aircraft will be quite a treat for myself when I read it after some years. Therefore, I will be writing a series of blogs on the same.