International Space Design Competition

During the summer, Year 13 student Libby took part in the Internation Space Design Competition Global Final, which was held at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida.

Read Libby's report below:

This past July I competed in the International Space Settlement Design Competition as one of the 12 individuals selected to represent the UK. This year we were tasked to design Alaskol, a fictional lunar based settlement that was primarily used to produce materials for construction in cis-lunar space (the region of space between the Earth and the moon); that takes the role of a large city, providing facilities to previous smaller lunar-based settlements that have been in the competition. The base had to house an initial population of 10,000 and had to have the capacity to develop to house a population of 20,000.

I competed as part of the Human Factors department in our “company” of 60 which was made up of the UK team, 4 American teams and one Indian team. We presented our proposal for the settlement to a panel consisting of Anita Gale, the founder of the ISSDC and an ex NASA employee who worked on the shuttle missions, Jack Gafford who is a Boing employee currently working on Starliner, Dan Hawk who in 2015 worked on the First Nations Launch, Robin Hawk who is an entrepreneur in the medical and biotechnological field and Bill Kemp who is CEO of United Space Structures.

Overall in the competition we came runner up and were told by the judging panel that it was a very close call between us and the winning team! It was a great introduction to the engineering industry and an incredible opportunity to experience what it will feel like to work in a big team on a project in the real world. Whilst we were in America we were lucky enough to get to watch the launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy which was especially amazing as we were with people who knew all about their engineering, so got an explanation of what was happing as we were watching.

We also got to go to Universal Studios for some team building prior to the competition and I met some great people I am sure I will stay in contact with.

Overall, it was a once in a lifetime experience and am looking forward to having some involvement in the UK competition in the future!