ISSDC 2015 Day 7 – The Results are In

Having stayed awake for the large majority of the night, our team only just submitted our proposal in time with most of the management team working manically in the last few minutes to print out originals of the slides.

Come 8am, we switched from pajamas to suits and made our way to the presentation theater at the KSC. Unsurprisingly, most of us slept through the other teams’ presentations and woke up just long enough to present our own. After some gruelling questions from the judges, we stopped for lunch and had the opportunity to tour the KSC and spend time in the gift shop.

Back in the theater, the judges went through the good and bad points of everyone’s proposals and eventually announced the winner. Unfortunately we didn’t win, but those of us who can still enter the competition next year will certainly try to again!

We’ve had an amazing week in Florida and are really grateful for being given the chance to represent the UK in such a competition. The valuable experience we’ve gained will undoubtedly help us all in the future.

ISSDC 2015 Day 6 – The competition continues

We arrived at the KSC for 8am and immediately continued with our design. There were many disputes throughout the day, which was not surprising, but a lot of work was accomplished and the proposal looked better with every passing hour. At 3pm we had the Red Team Review, where a panel of judges reviewed our presentation and gave us advice and pointers about how to improve.

Compared to yesterday, everything felt a lot more urgent as the deadline tomorrow is fast approaching. Most of the team is going to stay up all night to finish the proposal, and we will present it to the judges tomorrow.

p.s. Due to an unfortunate consequence of our trip to the beach two days ago, we had to stop at Walmart on the way home to pick up sunburn cream for Ed.

ISSDC 2015 Day 5 – The competition begins

Today was the earliest start of the week, as the competition began at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex at 8:30am. After meeting the CEOs of Grumbo Aerospace, we elected the presidential and director roles. From the UK team, Trisha is vice president of marketing, Eddie is director of operations and Chet is director of structure. We had technical training sessions for each department before starting on our design for a settlement on Mars. After an intense few hours we left the space center for the hotel, where work continued well in to the night.

ISSDC 2015 Day 4 – Sand and sea (and…

After briefly meeting the Argentina team in the morning, we went to the beach around lunch time. The weather seemed to hold out for the first hour or so, but the inevitable rain soon came in and we were effectively washed out of the beach.

Returning to the hotel, we met the rest of the countries on our team. After a few hours getting to know each other in the hotel, we went out for dinner together.

It has been a tiring day but we are all looking forward to the beginning of the competition tomorrow.