Lower Sixth student, Priya, recently took part in the UK Space Design Competition. Read her thoughts on the experience.
The competition I took part in is called the UKSDC short for UK Space Design Competition. This is an annual team competition where you pose as a company making a pitch for building some kind of base in space for human civilisation.
This year/ round that I took part in recently looked into building a Martian base for manufacturing purposes called Boscom. Our aim was to build this base to be able to build “CASSCS” which are basically giant shipping containers for our sister Martian base called Argonom, with the plan of expansion in mind, and the possibility to transfer to manufacturing other products as well.
I was part of a team with a friend I met during my work experience at the European Space Agency. We teamed up with other teams to form one large team for this competition. I was part of the structural engineering department, which looked into designing the base, and looked at calculating and planning how to build, insulate, and protect the base from the harsh conditions of Mars as well as the manufacturing of the CASSCS (and more).
Overall, the competition had a core focus on collaboration between different sectors, working as a team. At the end of the day, we presented our proposal in front of all the other teams and answered the judges’ technical questions.
