NASA's Centennial Challenge finished this weekend with all four teams walking away without the $250,000 purse. Here's what Joel Logue of the UMR Lunar Miners has to say before the competition on Friday:
12:01 AM Cali Time.I forgot what I was going to say last night, but I have better news now!
There are currently only 4 teams that are going to compete tomorrow. Three of the designs are similar in nature to ours, but the fourth is a very impressive design. I’ll take some pictures because it would take way to long to explain here.
Today was oh so crazy. Fumi didn’t get any sleep last night, while I got some excellent sleep on one of those Sleep Number beds (It’s like a little piece of heaven; thou I don’t know what heaven is like, hopefully they have sleep number beds…). He stayed up testing and working out kinks in our hardware. That’s seems to be the problem with a lot of people this year – teams with hardware problems, like the team today.
We got to meet and talk to the organizers of the competition today as well as some big wigs of NASA. We also talked to reporters from the New York Times and Launch Magazine (They feature a lot on rocket engines and model spacecraft - very cool). A lot of people looked at our design and had very nice complements to say about it while others seemed to be a little confused on how it will work. But we will show them in 6.5 hours!
All of the people asked where we were from and what school we went to, you know, the general “stuff”. They asked how the Lunar Miners formed or if it was just for a class project; I told them how it all started and that it’s not for the school but rather for us to learn some new things and explore different concepts. It looks like were getting a lot of media coverage! Yahoo, Space.com, New York Times, NASA, Launch Magazine, and Discovery Canada all know who we are now and what we can do down there in good old Rolla.
Here are some links: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/05/weekend_fun_sim.html http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/070511_regolith_challenge.html http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070511/sc_space/regolithrumblestagesetformoondirtdiggingcontestI wonder: If we generate so much hype about UMR, will they change the name? Wouldn’t that be funny if a student team forces UMR to reconsider their name change…
NASA gave us some mission badges (Oh so cool. Not everybody can say the have a genuine mission badge from NASA) and a sample of the stimulant will be digging tomorrow. It also comes with a nice safety pack because it can cause a form of cancer (silica cancer or something like that). We have extra badges for the missing team members as well.
There was also this little girl that followed me around asking questions and taking Fumi and my pictures with the robot and telling us that she’s competing tomorrow in the little robot challenge that going on here as well. She said she has been building robots since she was three because her dad works for NASA and builds them. I think I was playing and eating mud pies when I was three; apparently I missed out on some things.
Well, I need to get back to work and will let you know how we do tomorrow…
Leave a comment