Dougeldyne/Flechtel Corporation Places 2nd

Students from four countries competed as the Dougeldyne/Flechtel Corporation - Contributed photo

After 42 hours of design and prepa­ra­tion, the Fri­day Har­bor Aero­space Team and asso­ciate schools from Texas, Col­orado, Pak­istan, India and the UK placed sec­ond at the Inter­na­tion­al Space Set­tle­ment Design Com­pe­ti­tion World Cham­pi­onship. Accord­ing to the judges, the mar­gin between the first and sec­ond place team was paper-thin, the deci­sion com­ing after three hours of deliberation.

Despite falling short of being World Cham­pi­ons the expe­ri­ence has only made the FHHS teams’ resolve stronger to make it back to Inter­na­tion­als next year while giv­ing the team incred­i­bly valu­able expe­ri­ence with the Request for Pro­pos­al process, cross cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and a design chal­lenge that asks too much while giv­ing too lit­tle time. 

Over­all, the judges laud­ed the team’s design for a city on the moon geared to entice space busi­ness­es to estab­lish a foothold in an emerg­ing space econ­o­my. The team pro­duced what was eas­i­ly the best pre­sen­ta­tion of the day, both incred­i­bly per­son­able and detailed. 

Hav­ing to present fifty slides in 35 min­utes, the com­bined team’s design fea­tured an open­ing design con­cept illus­tra­tion from Max Mat­tox, an incred­i­bly detailed year­ly con­sum­ables chart for 18,000 res­i­dents from Joe­ly Loucks and Lucy Urbach, a ful­ly illus­trat­ed guide of lunar recre­ation­al oppor­tu­ni­ties from Evan Foley, and a fast emer­gency response sys­tem plus many images from Bran­don Payne. Arlo Harold, work­ing in Struc­tur­al Engi­neer­ing, helped with over­all struc­tur­al design and played a key role in get­ting the pro­pos­al into the judges hands at 7:30 Mon­day morn­ing. Over­all, the Fri­day Har­bor team had a hand in the major­i­ty of the set­tle­ment design, either with their images, cal­cu­la­tions, or design concepts. 

Com­pe­ti­tion orga­niz­ers specif­i­cal­ly con­grat­u­lat­ed the Fri­day Har­bor stu­dents for their unflag­ging work eth­ic and the thor­ough­ness of their designs. Oth­er team mem­bers rou­tine­ly com­ment­ed on Fri­day Harbor’s calm com­po­sure in the face of chaos and rou­tine­ly turned to them because of their trust­wor­thi­ness, col­lab­o­ra­tion skills, and quick­ly pro­duced, impec­ca­ble designs. In short, Fri­day Har­bor quick­ly estab­lished them­selves as the go-to group who can com­pete with some of the best stu­dents in the world. 

With the com­pe­ti­tion over, the Fri­day Har­bor team could be heard enjoy­ing the cama­raderie of their inter­na­tion­al team­mates late into the night and ear­ly morn­ing, which, after all the com­pe­ti­tion, is what it’s all about. 

Tues­day morn­ing found the team on a pri­vate tour of SpaceX facil­i­ties which includ­ed a close­up encounter with a Falcon9 rock­et and an incred­i­ble vis­it to launch pad 39A, dur­ing which the team got to stand on the launch pad itself. Pad 39A saw the launch of all of the Apol­lo and Space Shut­tle mis­sions, and it is rare to see it up close, not to men­tion to stand on it as it is being pre­pared to accept the nation’s next crew-capa­ble rocket. 

The Fri­day Har­bor High School Aero­space Design Team mem­bers are Max Mat­tox, Lucy Urbach, Bran­don Payne, Joe­ly Loucks, Evan Foley, and Arlo Harold. The Aero­space Design team is coached by FHHS teacher Daniel Gar­ner and was accom­pa­nied by Trudy Loucks and Jill Urbach. The Team would like to thank the Pub­lic Schools Foun­da­tion, San Juan Island School Dis­trict, the Lions club, the Leos Club, and the San Juan Rotar­i­ans for their finan­cial sup­port. We would also like to thank Mike Loucks for his help in arrang­ing the SpaceX tour, and all the mar­velous peo­ple of San Juan Island for their thoughts and good wishes. 

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