By Adeline G, Year 10 Journalist Leader

Bright and early at 8:30 on a chilly December morning, a group of physicists from Years 10 to 13 gathered at Imperial College for the annual UK Space Design Competition. Set in 2042, the UKSDC stimulates the industrial processes behind space travel and involves working with a team of around 30 students in various departments ranging from engineering to economics.

While we had all been part of the club for some time, the proceedings of the day were kept a mystery. The request for proposal – the doc full of requirements for the brief, and what we would all be working from – was a complete mystery before the day. We just knew it would be some kind of space settlement, but nothing about why we’d be designing it or even where it would be!

We were taken to one of the college’s many halls, giving us the feeling of university students attending a lecture. Here, we were told we would be designing a settlement called Balderol, which would be on the Moon! We would have to consider designing a functional settlement that equally adhered to the needs of 200 people of different professions.

We then met our team of 30 other students, all with varying levels of experience in the competition. After voting some of the team members into leadership positions on the basis of several one-minute speeches, we got to choose a department to settle into. There was a lot of work to get through, as we worked through each of the steps of the RFP. This often involved going around to talk to people from the other departments. This was quite difficult and even stressful at times; when one department didn’t know the answer, I was sent in circles around the room, being redirected to either another member of the team or another department entirely!

After some mild chaos before the presentation, including some people from other schools taking charge and leaving rather aggressive comments on the Slides, only elevating the pressure of the competition. Thankfully, we were rewarded at 5:30 with pizza and all of the tension somehow dissipated instantly. 

Following our well-deserved pizza break, we watched everyone’s presentations, listened to some feedback from the judges and saw the work everyone else had been doing. It was great to watch the variety of approaches people took from the same brief; no two presentations were the same and all 5 groups had very different ideas about the best ways to design the settlements. While there were only six main presenters, all 30 of us were required to rather awkwardly gather at the front for the judges’ questions.

The day ended with the announcement of the results and getting some very pretty stickers to put on our laptops. In the end, our team didn’t win, but we all left with a sense of achievement from having participated in the competition for over 12 hours. All in all, it was an excellent experience, not only to improve our physics and engineering skills but also to learn to work with other people in an industrial environment.

A big thank you to Mr Lawrence for giving up his Saturday to take us to the competition and Mr Ali for running the club!