Luke Tattersall, supervisor

What a crazy 48 hours.  The students from the UK and EU teams are now sleep-deprived, hungry and, let’s be honest, a little disappointed.

After two days and the best part of a night preparing their presentations, it was judgement day. The teams lined up at the KSC and presented their versions of a Venusian habitat for 10 000 people to the rest of the students. The four 35-minute presentations were all outstanding and, given that there was UK representation in 3 of the 4 teams we felt that we had a good chance of at least some of us carrying off the trophy. Alas, it was not to be as the presentation from Grumbo, the only company without UK representation, blew the rest out of the water. The science was equally good in all four presentations, but the professionalism of the Grumbo presentation impressed the judging panel enough to sway the final vote.

However, there was one award that a UK competitor did win. Alex Radford (pictured) won the prize for outstanding leadership.

There was a 5 hour gap between presentation and judging and the students used this time to look around the space centre – for any aspiring aerospace engineer this is Nirvana and the Saturn 5 rocket and the Space Shuttle “Atlantis” moved some of our students to tears – literally. It was a jaw-dropping experience.

The minibus ride home was slightly manic as sleep deprivation and the sight of a large alligator in the creek took its toll, but what an amazing couple of days.