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- The team had a fairly broad and flexible brief, with quite a bit of engineering and technical requirements – but unfortunately no specific team members with these skills. As a result, they took much more of a high-level approach to the challenge (as opposed to say optimising oxygen exchange).
- The team split into two sub-groups – one with a presentation focus, and the other greenhouse design. Their early focus on the presentation is obvious when you compare the final presentation from the groups.
- However they spent almost the first 30 hours brainstorming through various ideas and design elements, but had difficulty settling on a final design.
- Once given some external support and a possible framework to test the practicality of their ideas against – they quickly worked through and sketched out a final design, allowing the 3D modelling to begin and concrete work on the presentation.
- The This delay in deciding on the high-level design however meant some of the extra detail and unique design elements they'd brainstormed, were glossed over of or missed in the presentation, and in my opinion, this ultimately cost them in the judging.
- The 3D model , while great in the time permitted, could have substantially benefited with more time – and more clearly presenting and animation was great - but they needed a little more time – being able to show the greenhouse layout in each of the various configurations.states, with exploded views/etc, would have really helped
- They also had done a brief Skype and Google Hangout with the challenge organiser, who had emphasised the importance of a number of the human-elements of the greenhouse – but unfortunately they didn't communicate this to the judges. This, combined with the absence of more examples of subsystem detail ultimately cost them.
- Here are a few of the features they came up with, but didn't really communicateconvey in the presentation:
- The ability for astronauts to come in and service plants and adjust the inter-rack height of racks to suit different crops
- Astronauts could effectively have their own rack of plants – their own 'garden' – and the sense of ownership and pride that goes along with this
- The flight/transit configuration was quite efficient and allowed for a lot of additional storage – seeds storage. Seeds would initially be sitting ready and inactive in their growth medium, with their racks tightly stacked on the racks in the top-portion of the greenhouse, but with leaving lots of space below for priming resources such as water, seeds, gasses, and potentially storage for other base components.
- Some good work was put into thinking how habitat deployment would occur - such as using the lower pressure outside to transfer internally stored water into expandable bags on the outer side.
- Any necessary machinery, gas storage, etc which would otherwise take up space in the greenhouse - could be stored contained in a low cabinet that could double as a couch and workbench - giving somewhere they the astronauts could sit and relax while sitting on, with their plants lowered down nearby. Bring a book and take some time out...
- Potential use of the expanded greenhouse volume during the day for other activities – possibly as a kitchen.