by Nicole Willett (Editor)
Students to Mars!
The Mars Society's International Design Competition for High School Students 2022-2023
Around the world, in all the best university engineering programs, students encounter at some point a class different from all the others. This is the engineering design class, within which, instead of being tested as individuals on their mastery of lectures and texts, the class is challenged to work as a team to design a complex engineering system like a jet fighter or a fusion reactor.
Inevitability, the best solutions for each subsystem will conflict with the rest. For example, more powerful engines would maximize a fighter aircraft's speed, but take away mass that could be used for more weapons or stronger structures, and improving anything almost always leads to higher costs. So trades need to be made to try to find the best compromise. It is a deeply creative process, which is sometimes intensified further by different universities compete their designs against each other in intercollegiate tournaments.
Could this same methodology be used to tech science to high school students? The Mars Society decided to find out. Teams of students were challenged to design a human mission to Mars, and then to debate the merits of their designs against each other. The results were amazing.