Designing a Space Settlement

I know this is a bit late.

--
Kush

We are official

Aeross (Aero-Space Society), Delhi Public School, R.K Puram is now official.
We would like to thank the following members for their hard-work in making the society official and thus are the founding members(In alphabetical order)

• Dhruv Mathur-12-I
• Kush Agrawal-12-I
• Sahil Mathur-12-I
• Sannidhi Sharma-12-I
• Shubham Goel-11-J
• Ishan Sharma 10-L
• Sibesh Kar 9-A

Thank You!

And from now on please keep checking this space(Pun intended)

ATTENTION!!!

Dear Participants,

The date of submission for the PowerPoint presentations has been postponed to Saturday, 15th May 2010. The presentations should be submitted to the following by the Homeroom period on Saturday, at the latest, after which you will be informed of the venue for presentation judgement.

1)Sahil Nakul Mathur XII-I (F-208)
2)Dhruv Mathur XII-I (F-208)

Good Luck!!
Aerospace Society

The Scenario

DPS R.K Puram

Rules and Regulation:

1.       The submission date is one week from the day when you receive the RFP; we won’t consider any submission after the 7^th day’s break.

2.       The proposal has to be of 10-20 slides and must be provided as a hard copy as well as a soft copy (CD).

3.       We are not interested in any formulas. We know s=ut+1/2 at^2 .  If you are very keen provide the necessary formulas and other logics in the appendix after the main slides.

Letter from the competition organizers:

Dear Participant,

If you are Reading this you are most probably one of the 15 members qualifying the first round.

We, team of DPS RKP, congratulate you on reaching this level. The first level required knowledge and logic to clear. But to successfully give the proposal to this RFP along with knowledge and logic you will also require innovation, imagination and the most importantly you require practicality.

With this we present you the RFP, which requires you to design a space settlement. You will be in a future year; you may use technologies which are still under development but try to limit yourself to the technologies which are sure to be developed in the year you are in.

Thanks,

DPS RKP, ARSSDC Team

The Scenario,

Year: 2055

Rise in Global temperatures since 2010: 6.4 °C

Oil Reserves Estimated remaining years: 1 year(s)-5 years

Coal Reserves Estimated remaining years: 5 years-10 years

Oil Prices: 967$ per Barrel (from 98.6$ per Barrel in 2010)

The world is facing an energy crisis with the hydrogen combustion and sustainable nuclear technologies still in development phase and most of the people are switching to electric automobiles, the production and demand ratio of electricity is only rising. The world is at the brink of a huge blackout.

On the other hand, Global temperature rise has made the top headlines of every news channel.  12% percent of land mass has already submerged under and the sea by continuous Tsunamis hitting every alternative year.

In an emergency meeting at the UN headquarters, the foundation society was summoned to discuss the options available to save the world from the energy crisis as well as global warming. It was decided that the only solution was the launch of the Sotiras (Greek of savior).

Sotiras will have one main unit and two sub units.

The functions of the main unit will be:

1.       Control and Coordinate the other two units

2.       Carry out Data transfer and Communication to Earth and the sub units.

3.       Provide nice and pleasant environment for 2000 residents.

4.       Will report to the Earth.

The functions of the sub units will be:

1.       One of them will act as a solar shield which will reduce the total sunlight received by the Earth and hence reverse all the effects of Global warming.

2.       The other sub unit will be a cluster of SPS(Solar Power Satellites) Situated at the suitable langrage points which will absorb Sunlight, Convert to Radio Waves capable of reverse conversion to Electricity and will beam it back to the main unit.

The Company,

Your Company, Vereinigten Flugfahrten is aerospace company settled in Houston, USA. Its specialties are Space launch, In Orbit Vehicle Launch facilities and in a recent breakthrough it has patented a new technology known as Garbage Electro Blast system which promises to recycle waste up to 93%*.

Important Details to the contractor,

The first settlement starts with nothing. In Earth orbit there is vacuum, a variety of environmental hazards, unrealized access to extraterrestrial resources, and solar energy. There is no scheduled transportation service, no port to put into for supplies or repairs, no grocery store, no refueling station, no building supply store, no dirt to grow food in, no water, nothing.

The situation for the Earth is urgent. The only question for the designers is HOW to get it operating quickly. We start with the assumption that Sotiras doesn't have to be beautiful or elegant. It has to be functional, it has to be self-sufficient, it has to be comfortable enough that the people living there won't go crazy, and it has to provide facilities for building the solar shield. Anything else is fluff.

Other details about the competition,

If you do not understand where to start, what to do, feel free to ask us by posting a comment on rkpspace.blogspot.com or emailing us at space.citizens@gmail.com.

Question

There is a spherical ball in space. It is rotating on the x axis, if I start rotating it on the y axis as well, what will be the resultant motion, support your answer well.

The winner gets 418.949 VND.

Important Announcement

As per the attendance list I got today,
The following did not come in the meeting today,

Triveni Mishra XI-D
Srishti Gupta IX-I
Abhishek Chandra XI-E

Please contact space.citizens immediately! Provide a reason for your absence and request the RFP. You also need to be briefed about the different departments present so that you can select your preferred department.
___________________________________________________

I haven't received your registration emails OR your emails have been deleted, so please provide your emails.

Shaurye Chakravarty X-G
Srishti Gupta IX-I
Abhishek Chandra XI-E
Dhruv Gupta X-M
Tanvi Umashree XI-O

Human Engineering(Non-Qualifiers)
Achal Verma XI-E
____________________________________________________

Many other important details will be posted here soon, so keep visiting this website for the next complete week.


Thanks,
Ishan

Answers & Solutions

The answers given below are the ans. accepted by the examiners on the basis of what was written. Most of these were not predetermined, & allowances have been made for the use of logic & reasoning:


Q1. What is the ideal shape for a space settlement? Explain with reasons.
Ans. Torus/Toroid/Ring, Ellipse/Ellipsoid, Sphere, Cylinder, because the pseudo-gravity will be uniform along    the surface. Also they have a good volume/area ratio.

Q2. What are the effects of micro-g on human body? How will u induce gravity?
Ans. Muscles & bones weaken, circulation affected, height increases, head swells up.
        Gravity can be induced by rotating settlement & centrifugal accn. will act outwards.

Q3. What are the possible hazards for a space settlement?
Ans. Asteroids, space junk, radiation.

Q4. Suggest systems of computing.....
Ans. Ideal ans.-Cloud Computing, Quantum Computing
        But given ans. like nanoech, carbon nanotubes accepted

Q5.  If space sett. is around Mars, where to get resources?
Ans. Mars, Phobos, Deimos, Asteroids(give details of what resources from where)

Q6.  How to induce Earth-like conditions?
Ans. Day-night cycle, climate cycles(seasons), recreation, flora & fauna.

Q7.  Before the ISS there was Mir which held the record.

Q8.  Why don't metallic objects stick to ground due to magnetic field of earth?
Ans. Field intensity & strength too less. Strength= 30-60microtesla.

Q9.  What would happen to Earth if the Sun was to disappear at this moment?
Ans.  There would be no change for 8 mins. 17 secs. as information travels at speed of light. After this Earth   would move off at a tangent to its orbit.

Q10. Sequence ques.
Ans. 96 . The logic was that 10 is largest no. with 3 letters in name, 9 is largest with 4 letters in name & so on.
Q11. Describe LHC experiment & .....
Ans. Protons projected at 99.97% speed of light & made to collide in search of Higgs Boson, the particle thought to give matter property of mass.

Q12. Terraforming.
Ans. Transforming the conditons on a planet to mimic Earth, to enable colonisation.
(Formation of artificial soil or terrain not acceptable)

Q13. Baiknur Province, Kazakhistan.
Ans. Site frm where first man in space (Yuri Gagarin) was launched.

Q14. Successor to Hubble Space Telescope.
Ans.  James Webb Space Telescope.

Q15. Geocentric(Earth-Centred) theory.
Ans. Ptolemy

Q16. Celestial body with period 76 years. Year 1986, probe sent.
Ans. Probe: Giotto
        Celestial Body: Halley's comet

Q17. "The spaceship proceeded at the speed of light  to the planet at the centre of the planetary nebula".
Ans. Nothing can move at speed of light.
        No planet at centre of planetary nebula (such nebulae do exist, but they have core of dead star(white dwarf) at centre)

Q18. Famous astronomer, comet, crater, ashes on moon.
Ans.  Gene Shoemaker.

Q19. Comet named after him?
Ans. Shoemaker Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter, damaging areas the size of Earth.

Q20. Accelerating in orbit.
Ans. Always accelerating, but if tangential accn., then eccentricity of orbit increases.

Q21. What is gravity? Y do planets revolve?
Ans. Warping of spacetime continuum, due to presence of mass. Revolution due to  planet trying to escape the Sun's gravity well.

Q22. Spacewalk.
Ans. Action-Reaction principle applies on connection with spacecraft(push or pull rope) & pushing or pulling parts of spacecraft.