2009 NASA/NSS Student Space Settlement Design contest results

While I worked at NASA Ames Research Center I met Al Globus and had the pleasure of helping judge submissions for the NASA/NSS Student Space Settlement Design contest. It was always a thrill to see the creativity expressed in the submissions.

Some of the high school submissions looked like PhD thesis submissions and even the ones from 4th grade students were often beautiful.

There were submissions from around the world and the winners we would host and give a tour of NASA Ames.
Check out the web site. These students may well be our next engineers or passengers to a city in space. :-)
- LRK -
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http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Contest/Results/2009/index.html
2009 NASA/NSS Student Space Settlement Design contest results

Statistics

This year we received 294 submissions from 808 students sponsored by 93 teachers. Entries came from Bulgaria, Canada, China, Dubai, UAE, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Romania, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Uruguay. U.S. entries were received from 8 states: California, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York and Utah.

Note: All certificates will be sent out by 5/12/2009.

Important: All contestants, their families, and teachers are invited to attend the International Space Development Conference (ISDC - http://www.isdc2009.org/). If you are a contestant and plan to attend ISDC, please contact nss-students@comcast.net to determine if you will give an oral presentation of poster.

Winners

Grand Prize

The Grand Prize winning submissions for 2009 went to Eric Yam, Pooja Bhattacharga and Swastika Bhattacharga.
Eric is a student of Ms. Gillian Evans at Northern Secondary School in Toronto Canada. His project was named *ASTEN*.

Pooja Bhattacharga and Swastika Bhattacharga were instructed by Ms. Gishree Nanda of St. Xavier's High School in Orissa India. *Orissa Design Inspired Systemsand Aerovehicles * was the title of their submission.

Note: for the rest of the prizes there were individual, team (consisting of 2-6 students) and large group awards for two groups: 6-9^th grade and 10-12^th grade. Team names are listed by submission.

Student Art Gallery

First Prize

* /Extraterrestrial Residence City, /Sayantan Bhattacharya, Mary
Immaculate School, West Bengal, India. 6-9 Individual.
* /Space Settlement, /Chaitra M. Kumbargoudar, Karnataka, India.
10-12 Individual.
* /Gusto Smawaat, / Islamabad, Pakistan. 10-12 Team.
* /E-NeXt, /Jay Sanjay Patrikar, Shantanu Milaind Manke and Madhur
Sameer Bhalkar, Somalwar High School, Maharashtra, India . 6-9 Team .
* /EDENEST, /Apeejay School, Jalandhar, India. 6-9 Large Group. (tie)
* /MEGA, /Courtland Jr. SR. High School, Cortland, New York. 6-9
Large Group. (tie)
* /TOMIS, /Colegiul National "Mircea cel Batran", Constanta,
Romania. 10-12 Large Group.
* /DIVYA-Constanta Omega, /Colegiul National "Mircea cel Batran",
Constanta, Romania. Life Science.
* /UDAAN ART GALLERY, /Ryan International School, New Delhi, India.
6-9 Artistic Merit.
* /Space Settlements in Color, / Student Ching, School of
Creativity, Hong Kong, China. 6-9 Artistic Merit.
* /Space Settlements in Color, /Student Sing, School of Creativity,
Hong Kong, China. 10-12 Artistic Merit. (tie)
* /Abhivyakti, /Ryan International School, New Delhi, India. 10-12
Artistic Merit. (tie)
* /MERC, /Little Flowers Public Sr. Sec. School, Delhi, India.
Literary Merit.

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Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
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2009 NASA/NSS Student Space Settlement Design contest results
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Contest/Results/2009/index.html

--- The above notice was from an e-mail by Al Globus. His signature line follows. - LRK -
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The first space tourism business is already profitable! Burt Rutan spent about $40 million of Paul Allen's money to build SpaceShip One. This vehicle was piloted into space three times in 2004. The third flight won the $10 million dollar Ansari X-Prize, writing 'Virgin' on the vehicle's tail pulled in some more cash, and technology sales put it over the top. The flights lead to a $120 million contract with Virgin Galactic to build the first true sub-orbital tourist vehicle.

Al Globus
http://alglobus.net
Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the position of any organization I'm familiar with.
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http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/
Space Settlements
spreading life throughout the solar system
"I know that humans will colonize the solar system and one day go beyond." Mike Griffin, NASA Administrator.

Humanity has the power to fill outer space with life. Today our solar system is filled with plasma, gas, dust, rock, and radiation -- but very little life; just a thin film around the third rock from the Sun. We can change that. In the 1970's Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill with the help of NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University showed that we can build giant orbiting spaceships and live in them. These orbital space colonies could be wonderful places to live; about the size of a California beach town and endowed with weightless recreation, fantastic views, freedom, elbow-room in spades, and great wealth. In time, we may see hundreds of thousands of orbital space settlements in our solar system alone. Building these settlements will be an evolutionary event in magnitude similar to, if not greater than, ocean-based Life's colonization of land half a billion years ago.

Basics

* Who?
Pioneers at first, billions of ordinary people later.

* What?
Artificial ecosystems inside gigantic rotating, pressurized
spacecraft shielded from radiation.

* Where?
In orbit; near Earth at first.

* How?
Solar energy, lunar and asteroidal materials, and lots of hard work.

* Why?
To grow.

* When?
Good question, when do you start working on it?

* How much will it cost?
If you have to ask, you can't afford it ... *unless*

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--- Financial times are not the best but countries are still interested in space. - LRK -

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0904/25russia/

Russian lunar and Mars missions face delays
BY CRAIG COVAULT
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: April 25, 2009

The planned revival by Russia of its once mighty lunar and planetary robotic exploration program is beginning to falter due to Russian budget and spacecraft problems.

The difficulties are threatening to delay Russia's first mission to the Moon in 33 years. A Russian roundtrip mission to the Martian moon Phobos is also in trouble.

The former Soviet Union, which launched dozens of successful deep-space probes in the 1960s-1980s, has not flown a fully successful planetary mission of any kind since the 1984 Vega 2 Halley's Comet/Venus mission. And it has launched no successful missions to the Moon or Mars in 33 years.

In an effort to revive the Russian lunar program, the unique Russian "Lunar Glob" orbiter is to fire instrumented Russian penetrators into the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 landing sites explored by U.S. astronauts nearly 40 years ago.
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--- Some are not waiting for laws to change but are working to change them where the use of space is at stake. - LRK -

Galactic Mining Industries, Inc
http://www.space-mining.com/

http://www.space-mining.com/GMI-FINAL.htm
Proposal # X9.01-8721
ISRU Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) as a low-energy,
high-performance metals extraction and fabrication substitute for
Heavy Industries in support of Manned Exploration.
Galactic Mining Industries, Inc. // sysRand Corporation
Denver, Colorado 80212-2922 719-930-3161

Phase 1 Proposal

Parts:
1. Table of Contents – 1
2. Identification and Significance of the Innovation – 1
3. Technical Objectives – 6
4. Work Plan – 7
5. Related R/R&D – 9
6. Key Personnel and Bibliography of Directly Related Work – 10
7. Relationship with Phase 2 or Future R/R&D – 16
8. Company Information and Facilities – 18
9. Subcontracts and Consultants – 18
10. Potential Post Applications – 19
11. Similar Proposals and Awards -- 19
12. Letter of Commitment from sysRand -- 20
13. Letter of Commitment from Colorado School of Mines -- 21

Part 2: Identification and Significance of the Innovation -
In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) is the key enabler of future space travel and space exploration and colonization. It is essential to use materials indigenous to the Moon to build and support exploration missions, Moon bases and other space infrastructure construction programs. Present-day estimates are that it costs about $50,000 to $100,000 ("Tom Sullivan, pers. comm.")to take a one kilogram mass from the Earth to the surface of the Moon. With such a prohibitive cost, it will be essential to learn to “live off the land” on the Moon. Effective and efficient utilization of in-situ resources on the Moon must be maximized to provide the exploration effort with the infrastructure, propellants, and other material requirements necessary for lunar operations. Cost control for lunar and other space operations can be achieved by the use of in-situ resources.

This proposal describes iron reduction technology and Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) technology which are together capable of converting lunar soils into things such as oxygen and steel products. Analogous CVD technologies are used by International Nickel (INCO) of Canada to process over 100,000,000 pounds of nickel annually. CVD technology in this respect is not a laboratory curiosity, but is a well developed industrial process with significant levels of success.

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*Galactic Mining Industries and Telepossession and Galactic Mining Industries*
http://www.space-mining.com/Telepossession.htm

ABSTRACT: /Telepossession/ is a relatively new legal concept, which has been applied to maritime salvage in the case of the SS Central America. Herein, we propose the utilization of this concept to establish title to asteroids accessible from Earth orbit. We propose the acquisition of Stony/Iron and Iron Asteroids, and Cometary materials. Possession of these resources will facilitate the arrangement of financing and provide in-situ materials for the development of extraterrestrial infrastructure and habitats. /Telepossession/ is the utilization of robots to perform the tasks, which men would perform to establish title and ownership of space resources. In performing tasks such as men would perform at a remote site, the telepresence of a research group can have legal standing to establish a-priori domain over a property, and establish a form of legal possession.
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--- One person can make a difference. If you have a burning passion, let folks know. - LRK -

*Jerry Stone* FBIS FRAS
http://www.geocities.com/spaceflight_uk/jerry_stone.html

Freelance Presenter on Astronomy and Space Exploration
http://www.geocities.com/spaceflight_uk
Contact me about space workshops for schools and public lectures on space

Author of "One Small Step", commemorating the first men on the Moon

STEMNET Science & Engineering Ambassador
http://www.stemnet.org.uk/home.cfm

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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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