Video Competition

How does it work?

If you can’t make it to one of our digital heats  this year, you can still enter the UKSDC through our video competition! Teams are invited to submit a 5 minute video detailing a design that meets the Request for Proposal (see below) set by the Foundation Society – a fictional organisation dedicated to human expansion and development throughout the Solar System. Teams have until the December deadline to plan, record and edit their entry. This is an amazing group project, and we receive great feedback each year about how rewarding the experience can be for students! Any questions, get in touch with us by emailing video@uksdc.org or via out socials!

14th September 2020

Video Competition opens! The RFP will be released at 10:00 GMT and teams will have three months to complete their designs!

11th December 2020

The deadline for submissions! Submit your proposal to us via the provided form by 23:59 GMT!

11th January 2021

Results announced! Successful teams will be invited to join us at the national final in March!

Request for Proposal

Date of Issue: 14-09-2055

Consegna Veloce operates interplanetary vehicles for either cargo or passenger transportation. Their crewed spacecraft are called Caroliners, named after their late founder Carola Genovese. Their fleet currently consists of the Mark III Caroliner, which can operate in three configurations: carrying cargo of up to 120,000 kg, up to 30 passengers, or a mixed payload of cargo and passengers. The Mark III can travel to and from almost anywhere in orbit within the inner Solar System. To reduce radiation exposure, and to decrease shipment times, Caroliners are designed to minimise the transit times between destinations.

The Foundation Society has chosen to sponsor a capacity improvement project by Consegna Veloce in anticipation of their own upcoming developments in the inner solar system. You are invited to submit your design for the passenger section of the autonomously guided, inter-orbital Mark IV Caroliner. Consegna Veloce will consider proposals for vehicles that have a specified maximum passenger capacity between 200 and 300 people, and are capable of substituting passenger capacity for cargo in CASSSCs (Cargo Accommodation in Standard Space Shipping Container units are 30 feet long with nearly-square 15-foot cross sections). The vehicles will be operated only when passenger bookings are ±10% from the active use case’s passenger capacity.

  1. Show structural details of a ship utilising one or more propulsion units that can be docked as a medium size class vehicle.
  2. Specify critical systems and their power draws for vehicle operation under thrust and when coasting. Define mechanisms for power management or storage.
  3. Specify percentage of mass dedicated to passenger and cargo in at least three different economically viable use cases. Summarise methods for moving between these use cases.
  4. Specify and show arrangements for hull rupture and solar flare activity.
  5. Show internal designs, including methods to counteract claustrophobia and to maximise individual space for crew members even for variable occupancy.
  6. Detail design features that improve overall vehicle performance and operational efficiency and justify your choices for selecting them.

The propulsion unit for the craft will be provided by Earhart Advanced Industries; assembly drawings and a specification sheet for the combined propulsion and power unit are provided. One SATYR-4 engine is required for every 62,000 kg of vehicle wet mass (mass when fully fuelled) to provide performance to meet Consegna Veloce’s transfer time targets. Vehicle performance will be higher when fuel takes up a larger proportion of a vehicle’s mass. This is at the expense of fuel efficiency and so will cost more to operate.

Airlocks and hatches will be provided for the craft by Lossless Airlocks; a specification sheet for these components is provided. Airlock and hatch placement requirements are determined by the Foundation Society Compatible Vehicle Standards, also provided.

Additional documents:

EAI SATYR-4
LA Airlocks & Hatches
FS Vehicle Standards

The Rules of Entry

  1. Teams may consist of no more than 12 students, all between Years 10 and 13 (in England/Wales, or equivalent elsewhere in the United Kingdom).
  2. A photograph, or photographs, of all team members must be included at the end of the video submission. Please consider the privacy of everyone involved with any information you share in your video and consult your school’s policy if appropriate. If you choose to upload your video publicly, please take extra care over data you intentionally or may inadvertently share. We will not use any information about the team from your video to register you for the national finals; we will contact you for this purpose if your entry is among the winners selected by the judges. It is against the rules to swap or add team members between your submission and the national finals.
  3. Video submissions must be no longer in duration than five minutes. Any submissions longer than this limit will be handled at the judges discretion. Judges are aware that YouTube can slightly alter the duration of a video. Videos must be easily intelligible, with an audio track at no more than 1.25 times recorded speed.
  4. Judges will evaluate submissions on their effectiveness at meeting the above Request For Proposal (RFP). For each RFP requirement, submissions will be evaluated on their scientific accuracy, feasibility, communication, innovation, and creativity. Entrants are expected to make reasonable assumptions about aspects not covered by the RFP, but content not required by the RFP will not receive extra credit beyond contextual clarity.
  5. Teams should upload their video to YouTube (either publicly or as unlisted) and include the working link and a contact email address in the submission form below before the deadline at 23:59 GMT December 11th 2020. The judges will only accept submissions entered in this format. We will seek to contact you before the deadline if your link does not work, however we can only do so for submissions before 12:00 GMT December 10th 2020. For this reason please double check your contact email address is correct and is an account you check regularly. We will only contact you if there is a problem or a query, so please don’t worry if you don’t hear from us – it’s a good sign! If you have difficulties or problems with the submission or other questions regarding the video competition please email us at video@uksdc.org but please be aware that we may not be able to respond in time for the deadline for emails received after 12:00 GMT December 10th 2020.

Advice to Teams

Judges are evaluating the quality of your ideas and your appreciation of the scientific, engineering, and human challenges that must be overcome. For this reason, the engineering merits of your design should always be at the forefront of your mind when planning your video. It is important to accurately and clearly communicate your design to the judges in order for them to appreciate the thought and work you put in. Additional ideas or information beyond the scope of the RFP will not be penalised, however judging will focus initially on how well the RFP has been met. Never underestimate the difficulty of producing a video, or condensing months’ worth of work into five minutes!

The judges are looking for content that helps them to understand your solution to the RFP. If you wish to make use of computer aided design (CAD), rendering, or animation, you could give a text-based or audio explanation alongside to give context to the imagery. Additionally, try to find a good balance between the amount of text and the amount of imagery in your video, as they both have their advantages!

We may struggle to judge your design accurately if we can’t see or hear anything clearly! Plan your workload to allow plenty of time to record and edit the video. Whilst video and image quality are more easily improved, audio recordings are much more difficult. We recommend Audacity as a powerful and free audio recording and editing tool that can help you to produce a more professional and cohesive sound. If screen-recording is necessary, OBS is a free and quick program that will enable you to show off your work to the best of your ability. These are, of course, by no means the only choices and you may already have access to better ones.

Finally, enjoy the challenge! UKSDC allows you to explore new areas of science, work together as a team and generate interesting ideas to tackle the advancement of space travel. We look forward to seeing what you all come up with!