BROOKINGS How to live safely on Mars? That was the question posed to 52 high schoolers who attended the South Dakota Space Design Competition at South Dakota State University on March 8-9.
This is the second time weve run the event here at SDSU, but weve been running these events across the U.S., Canada and even globally since the mid-1990s, David Shaw, with the non-profit group Industry Simulation Education, said. Theres thousands of students across the planet who participate in these. Weve got partners in the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America and of course we run the event in North America. Were running nine events across the US and Canada this school year.
Last years one-day event in Brookings featured 13 competitors. This year, four times as many high schoolers enrolled for a two-day tournament.
Its a theoretical design exercise where the students form companies, Shaw said. Theyll be issued a request for proposal that outlines the requirements for the first space settlement on Mars. They have the weekend to design a space settlement to meet as many of the requirements as they can. Then (students present) their designs to a panel of judges from the engineering faculty here at SDSU.
That panel selected a handful of students to attend the world championships.
All our regional partners basically send their top students to an international event, which is similar to this but bigger, Shaw said. Thats held annually at the Kennedy Space Center in July. So the top participants here at the event at SDSU will be given the opportunity to travel to Florida in July along with participants from Australia, Germany, China and all over Europe.
He said young people often devise the most innovative concepts.
Radiation exposure is a big deal and a challenge to overcome when living off-earth, Shaw said. Some of the ways in which high school students decided to develop a livable settlement to manage radiation exposure using natural materials on Mars I was genuinely surprised by. We have a panel of judges that work with NASA directly and theyve said, huh? we never thought of that.
Todd Letcher is an engineering professor at SDSU who helped with this years event.
Seeing what the students come up with is just fascinating, Letcher said. These students dont know what they shouldnt do so they do wacky new things, and those turn out to be really some of the best ideas. These are some of the ideas that older, more experienced people arent going to come up with because theyre entrenched in the ways they do things.
Shaw said they hope to inspire high schoolers to explore engineering careers.
If you want to be a politician or a bureaucrat, youd participate in the Model UN, he said. But if youre a 15-year old in South Dakota who wants to work at NASA someday, youve got no idea what your career pathway looks like and how that impacts college, internships and graduate positions. In a lot of respects, were the Model UN for NASA.
He said aerospace engineering is a burgeoning field.
Were letting students know all across the country that there are avenues open to them, and it doesnt mean youve got to go to MIT, Shaw said. You can come to South Dakota State, you can study engineering here and you can pursue careers in a booming industry. Thats why we do this.
Shaw who travels the globe coordinating these events has a personal connection to the competition.
I went through this event when I was in high school. This is the reason why I went and studied engineering, he said. It was incredibly pivotal to my understanding of what engineering actually entails and what I could do professionally once I left high school and started college. If I can help one student at each event have that epiphany, then Im happy.
The winners from this years SDSU competition are Chetan Vanam, Joel Bennett, Philip Dibley, Aaron Miller, Addison Rubendall, Kavish Salunke, Jocelynn Olesen, Leanna Peterson, Gage Haan, Rachel Besaw and Kolby Syverson. Theyre each invited to the world championships at the Kennedy Space Center this summer.
Contact Jay Roe at [email protected].
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