Abingdonian 2020

40 The Abingdonian Blott Matthews In September 2019, four teams from the Lower Sixth entered into the Blott Matthews engineering challenge. All teams were set the same task, which was to create the design for a commercial moonbase as well as its operations, using technology foreseeably available within the next 10 years. Despite being given the same objective, the different teams had a surprising diversity of both the general and specific design choices, and the team I was part of answered questions and researched areas of science we would never have considered relevant at the start of the project. The most important decision from the start was how a commercial operation can be sustained on the moon. Currently, the only realistic plans to place humans on the moon in the next 10 years are sponsored by governments and have no commercial side, so we needed to generate our own ideas. If disbelief about the real world economics are suspended, there are a wide range of interesting ways to exploit the unique environment of the moon to make money. The possibilities for mining alone are tremendous, from the extraction of precious metals and helium 3 to capturing asteroids for their valuable elements. There are also some more offbeat suggestions such as a moon hotel for the ultra rich, or advertising with the moon acting as a billboard. A downside to these suggestions is that all these things can be done comfortably within the gravity well of earth, and while it is difficult to breed helium 3 or mine platinum, it is hard to imagine a time when it becomes easier to turn to outer space than simply increasing domestic production. Our team chose to use the vast cost to reach space to our advantage, and designed a base to lower the amount of launches needed to outer space rather than increase it. This was done by manufacturing fuel, solar panels and assembling satellites on the moon itself, to be sold to other space users such as NASA and Starlink. With a general goal chosen, designing the specifics required at least as much creativity, and calculating the specifics of the design pushed our A level physics’ knowledge to beyond breaking point. At this stage in the project, teamwork played a huge role, as, although the larger project could be split up into smaller challenges, the requirements of these individual systems were heavily dependent on the other parts of the designs. Once the designs were completed, we were able to make full 3D models to demonstrate our solutions in the clearest manner. The final project in the form of a document of about 50 pages was submitted by each team in the February half term. A presentation day was scheduled to take place in March to explain our project and exhibit our ideas, however this was canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak. The team I was part of was awarded first place and £500, and another Abingdon team was placed third. The experience certainly pushed us to develop our engineering and teamworking skills, and was ultimately very rewarding. James Gibson, 6RLR