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Bam! To the moon

ASEE Prism, Nov 1999 by Chadha, Rahul

EVERY YEAR, WORKERS AT THE Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, spend two days bulldozing tons of gravel and sand to recreate a lunar landscape on the center's grounds. The assortment of phony craters, lava ridges, and lunar soil make the array of space-travel vehicles that litter the area, including a Saturn moon rocket, look more at home. But the reason for their labor is not to create a movie set for the latest space flick. They're building a racetrack on which student teams from across the nation will compete in NASA's annual Great Moonbuggy Race.

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The race, first held in 1994, was developed to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the landing on the moon. Each team is made up of six students, who work together to design and build a pedal-powered contraption capable of carrying two team members-one female and one male-over a half-mile of simulated lunar terrain.

The competition held last April brought 28 teams together from 13 states and Puerto %co. The winning high school team, Graff Career Center in Springfield, Missouri, won a weekend at space camp in Huntsville. First prize in the college division went to Pittsburg State University in Kansas, which also finished in the top three in 1996 and 1998. "We've managed to create a winning tradition," says faculty advisor Larry Williamson. Winners are invited to view a space shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Center, where they are treated as VIPs by NASA officials.

To mimic some of the challenges faced by the creators of the original Lunar Rover, all rules for the competition are drawn from designs of the first moonbuggy. Students must address weight and volume constraints in their designs, exactly like NASA engineers had to do thirty years ago. To simulate loading the buggies onto a space shuttle, teams must fit them, unassembled, into four cubic feet of space and carry them a distance of 20 feet. The moonbuggies are then reassembled at the starting line, where they are tested for safety.

NASA has deliberately kept the rules of the competition simple so that engineering students will rely on their own creativity. "I think it's an opportunity to shoot for the goals that NASA engineers and scientists attempted at the beginning of the space race," says Frank Brannon, director of university relations at Marshall Space Flight Center.

While the main goals of the race are to foster teamwork, innovation, and an interest in NASA's space programs, the trip to Huntsville is also an opportunity to have fun. Williamson says one of the main reasons that PSU students participate is to have a good time, but he also acknowledges that "winning first place gives us a lot of bragging rights."

High schoolers are included in the contest to get students interested in engineering at an earlier age. Cole McNair, team leader for Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, had never even been inside a lab before taking part in the competition and designing his own moonbuggy Now he knows a lot about structural engineering.

"It's very similar to the real world," says Bijan Sepahpour, team advisor for College of New Jersey in Ewing, who won this year's design award. "You have to start from scratch and come up with a final product." One year the College of New Jersey team had to redesign their buggy from ground zero after discovering a design flaw only two weeks before the competition.

The experience seemed like a crisis at the time, but educators know that students gain confidence by overcoming those kinds of obstacles. Every year at the conclusion of the race, Sepahpour poses the same question to his team: "If you knew beforehand the competition would take so much time and effort, would you still do it?" The answer is always the same: a unanimous "Yes!"

Rahul Chadha and Kelly Gordon are Prism editorial interns.

Bam! To the moon

ASEE Prism, Nov 1999 by Chadha, Rahul

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