The International Space Settlement Design Competition Experience (ISSDC) competition I participated in as a high school student, and later on volunteered for as a university student. You can find the information on Spaceset.org - Space Settlement Design Competitions.

Quick Description

The ISSDC is a simulated industry experience that lets students act as engineers and respond to a hypothetical Request for Proposal (RFP) over the course of a few days. First, there are regional competitions (I participated in the Canadian ones), and students who qualify are then invited to the international competition, which takes place in Florida. Professional NASA, Boeing (and more) volunteer to be “CEOs” of the student “companies” and mentor students during the design process.

Below is a summary of my times participating and volunteering:

Experience as a Participant

  1. May 2019, Participant in the 2019 Canadian Space Settlement Design Competition - Group Size: 20 people per “company”.
  2. July 2019, Participant and part of the Winning Team in the 2019 International Space Settlement Design Competition - Group size: 50-60 people per “company”.
  3. May 2020, Participant in the 2020 Canadian Space Settlement Design Competition - Group Size: Individual (due to Covid).
  4. July 2020, Participant in the 2020 International Space Settlement Design Competition - Group Size: 50-60 Students per “company”. Distinguished for my work, and received the Dick Edwards Leadership Award

Notable work

July 2019 Finals

This year, the team I was on won first place in the competition. I was on the structural engineering team, and if you click on the following link, it will lead you to a newspaper article about this competition by Amy Reid ‘Very surreal’: B.C. students help design space colony in NASA-backed competition.

May 2020 Semi-Finals

In the May 2020 finals, I wrote a 3000-word proposal, designing a space settlement on Mars. This submission successfully qualified me for the international competition that year :)

I designed the space settlement in Minecraft (including showing the construction sequence), and drew the various robots and designs myself.

July 2020 Finals

In the May 2020 finals, I designed the construction sequence of the settlement on my own and presented it in front of 250 individuals on a virtual platform. This involved doing heavy research on civil engineering topics, and the diagram below is a visual summary.

This took approximately 18 consecutive hours of work and I received the Dick Edwards Leadership Award in my 60-person team for my initiative. Designing this sequence involved collaborating with several students from different sub-groups of our “company”, and ensuring that each of them could develop their designs (eg robots, settlement timelines, etc) based on my sequence.

Experience as a Volunteer

  1. May 2021, CEO in the 2021 Canadian Space Settlement Design Competition - Managed a group of 20 students.
  2. July 2021, Assistant CEO in the 2021 International Space Settlement Design Competition - Helped the CEOs manage a group of 60 students
  3. July 2022, CEO in the 2022 International Space Settlement Design Competition - Managed a group of 60 students.

Throughout these competitions, I acted as a mentor to students. I taught them different engineering concepts, such as using idea-generation processes, conducting trade studies, collaborating with other students, and more. I pulled all-nighters to provide support to these students and collaborated with other university-level students and industry professionals to ensure that the participants had the best possible competition experience :)