by Riya Shah
8th Grade
Second Place
Looking longingly out of my porthole window at infinite black ocean of space, I yearned to be on the planet Gorb, where bonafide, stationary, non-cramped home awaited me. Long gone were the days when I was content on this ship of my birth, Vestigo; conserving water, generating oxygen, and cultivating crops. All things necessary to survive here now seemed dull and uninteresting. As the morning alarm sounded, I crawled out of my sleeping bag without bothering to comb my silky pink hair. The multi-colored dried zinnia gazed at me with a rancorous stare, as if it knew I’d forgotten to water it. Terrabyte! You are a teenager and should know better! I went to refill my can. The appearance of everything else aboard the spaceship was mechanical, with a purple Vestigo logo on top. I'd lived in this spaceship all my life, surrounded by aerospace engineers, content with my pod. However, everything would change on the planet Gorb. I finished watering, and my personal robot, accompanied me with our newspaper, The Vestigian Times. Today was the grand opening of the walking adaptation chamber! It was designed by none other than my mentor, Mr. Han!
Head engineer of Vestigo, Mr. Han originally encouraged me to join him as assistant advisor on the Walking Chamber project. He was an expert at using a nickel catalyst to interact with hydrogen and carbon dioxide at elevated temperatures and pressures to produce water and methane. The system included many parts that helped ingest, pressurize, condense and transform gases to produce water at Vestigo. Joining our team was Ms. Oxygeni, a master of making oxygen from water with electrolysis, and Mrs. Kalliergeia, an expert in growing the delicious rainbow-colored vegetables that Vestigians had enjoyed for the last 20 years.
The gravity of Gorb was two times that of Earth. The original Vestigians came from that planet, and the gravity generators had been set to Earth-like conditions. Making Gorbish conditions would drain too much power, and the structural integrity of the ship would be compromised. Mr. Han said that it would be too dangerous to change the gravity aboard the ship, and we’d just have to practice inside of the special walking chamber, the only room with Gorbish gravity. How hard could it be? Being engineer, I walked into the chamber with confidence.
Stepping on the ground, it felt as if I was drawn to the core of the planet. I could feel the resistance pushing me down, hindering my every step. Thump. I’d fallen on my face. Why was walking so hard? Looking around, I saw an elderly woman scream painfully as she tumbled to the ground. Falling like that could be fatal.
Suddenly, I heard a curt, sharp voice speak over the biosphere’s intercom. “ALRIGHT FOLKS LISTEN UP! Word is that you’ve been falling. These injuries mean loss of trained staff, delay in projects and dwindling medical supplies, and we are on a tight schedule! So, you get walkers to help you!” The General had rounded us all up, for this? It must be even more serious than I thought. “Clan dismissed!” I was about to go finish decorating my personal gravity generator, but Mr. Han stopped me. He had a serious look on his face. “Terrabyte, you are the most brilliant teenage engineer on Gorb. I need you to help me. We can’t have people falling so often, because every single person here is vital for the mission’s success, and we can’t survive unless they learn to safely walk, fast! Can you help me fix my chamber?” How I could possibly help others learn this new skill?
As I tripped and stumbled to the exit, my walker wasn’t any help. It prevented me from falling, but it didn’t make the intensity of the falls any better. I needed something that wasn’t so heavy either, lugging the walker only tired me out more, and it hurt my shoulders. It would still cause a loss of efficiency and slow down the colonization process. An ideal solution would be lightweight, portable, and soft in order to cushion my fall. It would have to be on the astronauts themselves, and not in the chamber because we couldn't modify Gorb’s ground conditions. Like maybe a pillow!
I started making a prototype by strapping pillows to my spacesuit. They worked but took up a lot of space, plus they were hard to move around in. I needed auto-inflatable airbags that only activated when you fell. I opened my computer and found that a gyroscope was a type of sensor, and it detected rotation and angular velocity. If I could use one to detect when I fell, it could trigger a message to the airbags. However, there were no gyroscopes available on the Vestigo. Then I realized I already had a gyroscope inside my phone! I decided to code an app that would allow motors on my suit to expand when a downward angular motion was detected.
When I finally finished my prototype, it was time to test it. I had constructed a leather suit insert with six motors encapsulating its perimeter and mounted it on a dummy. I had the dummy test in the chamber fall a few times and noted down the key areas that were vulnerable to fall damage. Then I moved my airbags to those places. When the phone, which was Bluetooth connected to the motors, sensed a fall, it would alert the motors. The motors would expand, causing the airbags to inflate, and therefore cushion the fall.
My prototype worked well the first few times, but Ms. Oxygeni always said to test for consistency. So, I conducted multiple trials, making note of the impact. I noticed that after a while, the bag would warp and thin. So, I switched out my plastic bags for tougher cloth ones. They had aesthetic and functionality.
Lastly, I added a personal touch. The bags would encourage you whenever you fell. I remember how lonely Ms. Kalliergia felt when she was aboard Vestigo at first. So, there was a robot companion aboard the ship that encouraged her whenever she fell. I had my bag worked on the same concept and put in a speaker that said a positive message whenever you fell, to boost efficiency even more. It would give tips on how to improve one's posture and walk better, based upon the person's individual fall history
After I went through multiple test subjects, made sure my sensors were working and offered adequate protection, I decided to go to the general’s chamber with my prototype. When I walked in, he was constructing a CAD model for our new habitat. “General? I have a solution to our problem. My airbag insert will help people and save lives while we adjust to the new gravity conditions.” I brought out my insert and demonstrated how it worked. “Wow, Terrabyte!” He said with an excited look on his face with a great smile. “This is really smart! How’d you do it? Start manufacturing it ASAP” “I followed the Engineering Design process”, I said. At that moment, I felt an incredible sense of self-realization in knowing that I had valuably contributed to the community of Vestigians.
Engineer's Note:
The semicircular canals are one of the most important parts of your ear. They maintain balance, which is crucial for even the most mundane of tasks, like getting dressed or walking the dog. Usually, one’s semicircular canals maintain an equilibrium, but when abnormal gravity situations come into play, one’s semicircular canals get all out of order! It’s been well documented that astronauts struggle when returning to Earth after experiencing micro-gravity conditions. I wondered what would happen if one had to adapt to a planet with higher than normal gravity conditions, and planet Gorb was born! My learning tool will be a personalized airbag attachment with sensors that will assist my character, a perky, intelligent, 13-year-old named Terrabyte in learning how to walk safely using engineering design process. In addition, this tool motivates when one falls with positive messages, which will eventually improve one’s posture while walking. This technology will greatly help the astronauts because they need to start the colonization process ASAP and falling will lead to injuries. When colonizing a planet, any injury, great or small, will hinder the progress rate of the civilization. Airbags are a proven method to prevent impact injuries and can easily be created using common materials found in a spaceship. I hope you enjoy!
Annotated Bibliography
General Information-how you inner ear is affected in space
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/features/F_Human_Vestibular_System_in_Space.html
An article and video showing astronaut Scott Kelly stuggling to walk after being in space
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/28/16549898/scott-kelly-pbs-exclusive-clip-year-in-space-walkingproblems-zero-gravity
Some statistics about the dangerous impact of falling
https://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/falls/adultfalls.html
General Information-3D printing in space
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/3d-printing-in-space-long-durationspaceflight-applications
How artificial gravity might work aboard a spaceship
https://interestingengineering.com/create-artificial-gravity-space