On Saturday 28 November, 23 students from the Boys’ and Girls’ Schools logged into Microsoft Teams to take part in the regional heat of the UK Space Design Competition (UKSDC), beginning a long day of space designing and competing. Vaidehi Chauhan tells us more.
The twelve competing schools were grouped together to form four companies. The Habs teams were joined by Malmesbury School to form the company, Kepler Automations. Within each company there were four main engineering sections: human, structural, automations and operational. Each company elected the key roles of vice president of engineering, vice president of marketing and a president.
The day began with a presentation discussing the brief, to design and plan the construction and habitation of a refinery colony on Mercury in the year 2061. After the company elections, the groups began researching ideas for the foundation of the presentation. The automation team brainstormed many ideas and worked well as a group to develop the robotics that would be used throughout the competition. They collaborated with the other groups to understand their specifics and developed an AI system nicknamed GRU along with modularised robots named ‘minions’.
Ria Bhojani, as VP of marketing was responsible for our final presentation and collating the information from the different departments. I was in charge of the Human engineering group and formed a medical team to consider various aspects to improve the general health of the people on our settlement. This was key to ensuring that the humans on the refinery were safe and that we could treat injuries as a result of any unexpected incidents.
Towards the end of the day, we focused on the finances and projected costs of everything. The management team made sure all the departments were communicating and working efficiently, through shared documents. In the end, all of our teamwork and communicative skills were worth it and we won! We look forward to competing in the national finals in the spring.
