Starting Conditions & Constraints on the Moon

A lunar space colony is being constructed. Your team is responsible for the school and its environmental systems. You will be provided with an enclosure (a dome) that:

• Is insulated to protect the inhabitants from the extreme temperature changes on the moon and holds the interior at a constant comfortable temperature
• Contains an atmosphere with the same composition as the earth's natural atmosphere
• Maintains earth atmospheric pressure
• Allows light to pass through
• Protects the inhabitants from harmful radiation

Air, building materials, water and supplies must be brought from earth. Electric energy will be provided, but it will be expensive, so your design should take conservation into consideration.

The length of a lunar day is equal to 29.5 earth days. The colony is located where there are 15 earth days of sunlight followed by 14.5 earth days of darkness.

To meet the needs of the lunar colony, you must design a middle school that accommodates 500 students & teachers. The people in the lunar colony will maintain their normal earth schedules (24 hour cycle). The school will be occupied 8 hours out of every 24 hours, 5 earth days a week, year-round.

You will need to:

• Determine how to maintain the proper balance of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and oxygen (O₂) to sustain life
• Determine the surface area of the ground beneath the dome to meet all the requirements for a self sustaining system
• Include area covered by plants, if they are part of your design
• Construct a scale model of the lunar surface contained within the dome and the school (you do not need to construct the dome)
• Show the overall school facility (how it looks from the outside) and an example of a "classroom"
• Identify and discuss how your design minimizes energy consumption.
• For the "people's choice" award, you should identify and describe an entertaining and innovative way to utilize the different lunar environment for a recreational activity (gravitational pull is 1/6 that of earth)

Here are some questions to help you begin:

• How will the O₂ consumed by humans be regenerated?
• How much O₂ will the inhabitants need daily?
• How will the CO₂ be removed from the atmosphere?
• How would the school facility on the moon differ from your present school?
• How might the structure differ from your present school?
• Which elements of your present school would you retain, change or eliminate?
• How will the length of the lunar day affect your design?
• What aspects of the school will consume energy?
• What energy saving choices did you make?
• What kinds of new and fun recreation are possible on the lunar environment?

These are just a few questions that may help you. You are not limited to these ideas.

Your project will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

School:

• How well does your design of the school facility demonstrate engineering / scientific principles
• How innovative is your design of the school facility (also taking into account the domed lunar environment)

Air:

• To what degree does your solution to the CO₂ / O₂ problem demonstrate a basis in engineering & scientific principles
• To what degree does your CO₂ / O₂ solution show creativity & innovation

Energy:

• How well do your energy saving ideas demonstrate engineering / scientific principles
• How innovative are your energy saving ideas

Model:

• How good is the quality of construction of your model
• How great is the attention to detail in your model

Presentation:

• How strong is the teamwork exhibited amongst your team (e.g., did everyone contribute equally)
• How effectively do you use your model and poster to support your points

Note that the above elements contribute up to 85 points of your overall team score of 100 points.

Essay:

Prior to the FSDC event, your essays will be scored by the organizing team on the following 5 elements:

• Include a brief description (300 - 500 words) defining the problem of O2/CO2 balance and how you will solve it
• Include a brief description (300 - 500 words) defining how you intend to address energy management issues
• Include a list of the contributors to the project and their responsibilities/li>
• Include a source list (bibliography) that contains at least 3 authoritative sources that you have used in researching your project
• Be received by IBM on or before March 31st - send essays to Lisa Costantino lacosta@us.ibm.com

Note that your essay's 5 elements contribute up to 15 points of your overall team score of 100 points.

• The solutions to the lunar school environment must be substantially designed and the model constructed by the student team. During the judging, the students will be asked to describe the process of creating the school facility, including the primary contributions of each team member, the contributions of the coach/mentors and other adults, and how the group coordinated its work.
• The model and poster display must either fit on a table (nominally 30" deep by 50" wide by 36" high) or stand on the floor (and be less than nominally 30" deep by 50" wide by 72" high).
• The model may incorporate electric, electronic and/or software elements.
• The total cost of all materials used to construct the model may not exceed $100 (both hardware and software).
• Tools used for construction are not subject to the $100 budget limit. Such tools might include wood or metal shop tools, personal computers and/or the application software (e.g. editors and compilers) used to construct the real or virtual model.
• Software components (if present) should be used in a way that demonstrates significant creative design effort.

Human O₂ consumption and CO₂ production.

Information about the amount of O₂ consumed and CO₂ produced by humans varies somewhat (as may be found in the websites below). If you would like, you may use the following approximations as your starting point. If you prefer another source of data, please be sure to include the data that you used for your calculations.

Adult humans breathe about 15 times every minute. Each breath exchanges about 500 ml of air. The composition of the air we inhale on earth is 21% O₂ and 0.03% CO₂. The composition of the air that we exhale is about 15.5% O₂ and about 3.6% CO₂. If you calculate this out, you find that an adult consumes about 25 liters of O₂ and produces 16 liters of CO₂ every hour.

Plant life and the O₂/CO₂ cycle

Conversions you may need:
1 lb of O₂ = 454 g O₂ = 14.2 moles = 318 liters = 11.2 ft³ of O₂
1 lb of CO₂ = 454 g of CO₂ = 10.3 moles = 231 liters = 8.16 ft³ of CO₂

General sites that may be of interest: