Oakton at 2011 NASA LunarBot Competition

From George Tootelian on May 30, 2011 at 5:43pm CST:

It was a great trip! Our team worked together so well, exemplifying the best of Oakton Community College. Ours was the only community college in this ranking, pitted against prestigious universities, all of whom had much larger budgets. Many of their teams had graduate students, credit toward term projects, and two to four credit hours for successful completion. In addition, NASA had provided a $4000 grant to each university team if they got their request to NASA by deadline. I asked Susan Sawyer if she could include community colleges and she promised to look into getting the same appropriations next time.

NASA's P.R. department was quite interested in the Owen story and interviewed me. As their deadline was Thursday, they never interviewed Owen. Owen's parents arrived Friday and we were able to obtain T-shirts for their whole family.

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, never qualified, so Oakton was the only college representing the state of Illinois. We did qualify on Tuesday and did quite well in the10 minute allotted time slot. We were also a bit below the 80 kg weight limit. A team next to ours was not as fortunate, as their design exceeded the weight limit. They worked all night, drilling hundreds of holes in their structure, to lose the kg's. It worked!

Monday, May 23, to Wednesday, May 25, was "time trials,” inspection, communications approval and practice time. Thursday, May 26, to Saturday, May 28, was official competition.

How did we do? On Saturday afternoon, our name was announced. Our team members donned their hazmat suits and entered the arena to lift the Bot into position. In the control room, Faheem and Dan waited for the start signal. There was trouble in communicating; either no signal or erratic. Eventually, Dan did get through. The Bot sped to the wall and could not be stopped. We watched helplessly as the Bot struck the wall at a good clip and fell to its side. That finished us. Whereas, before, on practice day we had a respectable quantity of lunar material harvested, here where it counted we got zero. There was an "Oh, no!" from all of us watching outside on the large monitor.

Thirteen teams had harvested 10 kgs. or more. In fact, the lowest team of the 13 would have won last year! First prize, for most lunar dust harvested. was Laurentian, a Canadian University 400 Km north of Toronto. Their take was over 522 pounds! They are bilingual; English and French. After the award ceremony I asked the Laurentian team member holding the oversized replica check, in the amount of $5000, if they should have requested the money in Canadian Dollars. He almost fell in laughter.

The Laurentian adviser gave an extemporaneous speech, from the heart, saying the USA is still the best country in the world -- in its encouragement of creativity and opportunity for all. There were teams from South America, Bangladesh and India who competed.

Can you imagine taking your Lunar Bot through customs (In pieces)? Some local and Indian teams shipped with FedEx and other firms. Some were on pins and needles, waiting for their machines to show up. There is a photo in the album, on my Facebook page, showing the relative ranking of the teams. The Laurentian Bot was a powerhouse! With 1kg. equaling 2.2 lbs., theirs was an impressive feat.

I can't say enough good things about Andy Roach. He was like a father, priest, and big brother - and he had to endure four days in a vehicle with the rest of the group! The team was exemplary in deportment and we had a lot of fun together. On one occasion we visited another museum and the team each did the centrifuge thing, revolving up to 4 G’s -- nobody got sick.

Ann Marie's pre planning really paid off. Our room rates were very competitive (the best around) and the hotel was clean and comfortable. I told other teams our rate and they were astonished. The team became tired of the high fat/starchy complementary breakfast after a while. On a sad note, Val's grandfather in Chile died so she had to shoulder that burden.

We stayed within the budget guidelines and I'll have a blue voucher ready for Ann Marie tomorrow. The team is already talking about next year. Several team members are going to other Universities and promised to compete against us. Dan suggested we verbalize, in an audio recording, what we learned and how to improve our design for next year. I want to see that report.

Was the trip worthwhile? Did we learn anything? Without a doubt, yes! We were up against very sophisticated opponents. And there we were, an optimistic little community college team, competing against behemoths -- a real eye opener. And we hope to do it again next year!

Cordially, George T.

Team Members:
MikeMazur co-team leader
Daniel Kramer co-team leader
John Shaba
Faheem Memon
Blake Levien
Valentina Fonseca Krug
Kyle Uhl
Felix Markman (unable to go on the competition trip, but worked on the design)