On Saturday 23rd November the regional heats of this year’s UK Space Design Competition were held in the University of Liverpool and again NSC Chairman Bob Morris was one of the judges. The Competition is for school pupils in years 10 to 13 and is designed to encourage and stimulate an interest in space and engineering. The origins of the competition go back to the USA in 1983 and in 2008 Dr Randall Perry of Imperial College, London set up the Space Science and Engineering Foundation to run the competition from the college. The winners of the UK competition take part in the International Competition in the USA. There is also a Galactic Challenge for ages 10 -14.
For the heat in Liverpool the participants had to design a manned base to be used for the mining of small asteroids and processing the results into usable products. The project was set in the year 2077 and the base had to designed such that it could be moved to other asteroids and re-used. The winners of the heat was a team comprised of pupils from West Kirby Grammar School and St Edward’s College who go forward to the final in Imperial College.