Space Settlement Design Competitions introduce High School
students to how industry works. In order to make this experience
as authentic as possible, we need help from people who have worked in
industry or government, and can communicate some of this experience
to the participants. Categories of volunteers for during the event
include Judging, CEO's
and Technical Experts.
It is not necessary that you have skills or experience directly
related to the aerospace industry, spacecraft, operations in space
environments, or space settlement concepts. We have information that
we give both to you and to the students to help you in this. For each
competition, we select and copy articles culled from technical
journals and magazines that provide background information to help the
participants develop their designs. Your most important
qualifications as a volunteer are that you feel comfortable conversing
with a group of about 20 High School students, that you are interested
in helping young people to learn, and that you
understand the basic information we will send you. We expect you to
reasonably extrapolate your knowledge about how communities work on
Earth, in order to help kids figure out how they might work in space.
As clever and creative as they may be, they are still kids, and we
only have to stay a step or two ahead of them to add value to this
experience for them.
We need volunteers who can help us as CEO's,
Technical Experts and Judges. CEO's stay with their teams through the
competition. Technical Experts conduct Technical Training
Sessions that provide background information in four different
technical areas; we require at least two Technical Experts per
technical area. Technical areas are
described below. A team of judges is needed
to examine the proposals and determine the winner of the "contract"
and competition based on the rules introduced for the Request for
Proposal at the beginning of the competition.
We need judges for this event who will be fair and impartial.
The students will be given a set of parameters within which to work.
Judging will be based on the following:
Formatting rules for the proposal, such as one submitting an
article to a magzine, technical conference would have to follow.
Technical merit found in each of the four categories:
Judges will be given the terms of the Request For Proposal and make
a decision which team/company will win.
Qualifications: Experience with or an intimate understanding of
business agreements, government grants and/or contracts. People
who currently have roles such as project managers, executives,
lawyers, primary investigators, officers or chairs of events or
non-profits would fit this role well.
Each of the four Design Competition "companies" needs a CEO,
whose primary responsibilities are to keep the team focused on the
goal--to produce a design and a briefing that describes it by
Sunday morning--and to make sure team members responsible for
different parts of the design are communicating. Many Design
Competition CEO's tell us this is just as challenging with the High
School participants as it is with employees at work. Indeed, the task
resembles the work environment as much as possible: the teams have 24
members, who have responsibilities outlined in an (abbreviated)
organization chart. We make sure that no one person has all of the
knowledge required to complete the design, by having "engineers" from
the different departments in each company attend training sessions
that provide them with insights and background materials unique to
their disciplines.
Qualifications: Experience with managing employees, either
directly (as a supervisor, manager, or executive) or with
responsibility for a project requiring support from others (as a
project engineer or project manager). Officers or chairs of major
events in volunteer organizations may also have the requisite
experience.
In the Design Competition, Structural Engineering is responsible
for the overall design of the Space Settlement, including the exterior
shape and structure, and allocation of "land areas" inside for
different activities (e.g., residential, manufacturing, agriculture).
The Technical Session can include discussions of options for
structural shapes, protection from the space environment, the types of
activities the design will need to accommodate, the kinds of materials
that can be used in construction, construction techniques, and even
trade-offs of atmospheric pressure inside vs. the amount of structure
required to contain it.
Qualifications: Common-sense understanding of how structures
need to be put together in order to carry loads (e.g., pressure
vessels need round cross-sections, trusses and arches are good
structural elements), logical understanding of the space environment
and related design challenges. Background materials for this session
include information on construction methods applicable to the
Competition scenario.
Design Competition Operations Engineering departments are pretty
much responsible for anything that isn't handled by another
department. Basically, these are the infrastructure providers.
Discussions in this session can include where to find materials for
building the settlement, how to get materials to the construction
site, space vehicle capabilities, orbits, sources of electrical power,
communications systems, transportation inside the settlement, food
production, and how to maintain a closed ecosystem (including
protection of the environment that is created). It is not necessary
(or possible in an hour and a half) to go into every topic in detail;
e.g., the library includes materials on ecosystems and environmental
factors, which can be discussed as issues that need to be addressed in
designs, and for which students can research the details.
Qualifications: General understanding of infrastructure issues,
especially space transportation and vehicles. The program book and
background materials provided for this session include information on
materials sources, orbits, space vehicles, power production, and
agriculture.
Human Engineering departments have two major tasks in the Design
Competition--establishing requirements for the environment and
services that other departments will create for the residents, and
designing the communities and buildings in which the population will
live and work. Discussions in this session can address what humans
need that the settlement will have to provide, and what attributes
make communities and homes nice places to live in. The library has
extensive materials addressing these issues, so it is not necessary to
go into everything in detail.
Qualifications: Common-sense understanding of what humans need
to stay alive, healthy, and happy (e.g., air, food, water,....), and
appreciation for aesthetics of community design. Background materials
for this session include information on physical and community needs.
The Automation Engineering department designs computer and robot
systems for the space settlement. The intention of the session is
mostly to focus the kids on what the computing and robot challenges
will be. Discussions can focus on what computers and robots will do,
how many of them (and/or how big) they might have to be, what robots
should not be expected to do, and what kinds of advancements we can
expect in automation by the competition year.
Qualifications: General familiarity with computer capabilities
and functions. Common-sense appreciation of what robots can and
should do. Background materials for this session include descriptions
of computer limitations and reasonable robot applications.
PLEASE contact the organizers of the event to see how you can help!