Fifteen Years of NASA Student Space Settlement Design Contests: Some Lessons Ames Research Center

Format:

Conference/Event

Author/Creator:

Globus, Al, author.

Conference Name:

International Conference On Environmental Systems (2008-06-29 : San Francisco, California, United States)

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Warrendale, PA SAE International 2008

Summary:

Since 1994, the NASA Ames Research Center has hosted an annual space settlement design contest for 6-12th grade students. Thousands of students and hundreds of teachers from around the world have involved themselves in space settlement, including environmental and life support systems, some devoting months of intense effort. Prize winners now find themselves at Harvard, Stanford, MIT and other top universities, and at least one flew a zero-gravity experiment for the European Space Agency (ESA).Contestants work at home and send their entries to NASA Ames each March. Extensive reference materials are supplied on the web. All entries are judged on a single day by a panel of NASA and contractor scientists and engineers. In 2007, the Ames center director, Pete Worden, was a judge. Many categories are created to generate a large number of winners and every attempt is made to reward entries that show serious effort with some sort of prize. All winners are invited to visit NASA Ames in June. This allows us to meet many of the best contestants and has led to a number of collaborations resulting in published technical papers.1-4 The contest is administered by a single, very part time public school teacher at a total cost of $3-6 per contestant.Key lessons-learned include:

Notes:

Vendor supplied data

Publisher Number:

2008-01-2202

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license