Lots to Do!
I am busy as ever, so apologies for not having updated this site recently. Next week I'm off to Nottingham and Imperial. Tomorrow is the regional heat for the UK Space Design Competition and today was the British Maths Olympiad.
Just a typical schedule.
The BMO has an embargo on talking about it online until 8am tomorrow, so I'll keep Stumm. The Space Design Competition is infinitely more interesting to read about anyway - except it hasn't happened yet so I can't tell you!
The thing with the UKSDC is that I like to prepare. Some other people in our school's team are also very keen on preparation. Often the teams we're working with are not, apparently. So last year we elected a president from another school, and well... I'm not going to insult her abilities, but it was not well organised. We did fine in finals, but we didn't win and we could have. We really, really could have. So this year, we're going to try to put all our support behind one of our team (only one of us will run, to not split votes, most of us vote for him because we KNOW he's competent. Sure, everyone else probably is, but they aren't always.) Then ideally we get most of the heads of departments also to be from our school, but that's less necessary.
What is necessary is that we are prepared.
After not-quite-winning last year, I compiled a list of the teams' major ideas and flaws. That list was added to a little afterwards (new ideas, some sources) but mostly languished. I compiled a list of materials (mainly just names, with spaces to put in material properties and costs later). That mostly languished. The group came up with spreadsheets to organise the work on the day. You get the picture.
Well, those documents all still exist. If we can just get one of us elected president, they have the best tools we can give them. If it's not one of us, well, we can still use all the stuff anyway (but since we've all seen the kit, and some of the user-interface is not 100% costumer ready, it might be smoother with us). I've researched orbital locations, a friend has researched the ISS, another has researched hydroponics and aeroponics. One of us compiled a spreadsheet to work out costs and income, and another to produce Gantt charts.
We're ready.
And I hope that I don't have to eat those words tomorrow, because one of the other schools that will be there tomorrow was in the team that won last year.
Bring it.
