SSDC vs Reality

SPACE SETTLEMENT DESIGN COMPETITION

SSDC VERSUS REALITY

A statement you may hear many times during your SSDC experience is “Now you know what it is like in industry!”. This is, after all, an industry simulation game. You will have too much data in some areas, too little in others, not enough time to search out what data are available. There will be personnel conflicts in your company, technical conflicts between departments, difficulty in describing your entire design during the time allowed for presentation to the judges, and tough questions from the judges which may reveal discrepancies or “I forgots” in your proposal. All of these are challenges faced by real engineers and scientists in real companies (and have been faced by most of the volunteers and mentors who will be helping you during the Competition). Of course, a lot of the SSDC is pure fabrication: it describes as history things that haven’t happened yet (but they could). So what is real and what is SSDC speculation?

The basic products, vehicles and structures described for the SSDC are technically possible within the time frames indicated. They do, however, represent ambitious technical, economic and political commitments. Some will never happen, some will. Some are projects that SSDC participants who become engineers will work on during their careers.

The SSDC companies, including their product lines and histories, are based on composites of real corporations, projected into the future. No SSDC company, however, is based on a single real company. Company names do not indicate any similarity to real corporations. The recommended SSDC organizational chart you will be given is a true reflection of part of a generic organizational structure used by many companies.

There is no such organization as The Foundation Society. The described efforts by The Foundation Society to foster commercial space infrastructure development could, however, be accomplished by other existing organizations.

The Request For Proposal and the proposal process reflect, as closely as possible, the system by which real corporations propose, compete for, and win contracts for new business.

Information about space environments and resources is based on numerous references. Articles and other materials provided for background information are genuine technical documents that have appeared in print, or were specifically prepared for the SSDC, and are based on serious research. Sources are clearly marked where possible, and are genuine. “Department Descriptions” represent a summary of the types of tasks , analyses, and factors that similar real departments and groups address.

Difficulties associated with planetary dust are real. It is incredibly fine, gets into everything, defies all attempts to completely remove it from anything that has been “outdoors”, and will ultimately destroy any mechanical equipment it gets into. You will encounter this problem in most of the SSDC scenarios, just as real engineers must deal with the problem.

Descriptions of future commercial products manufactured in space, space-based businesses, and health benefits and challenges of life in space are somewhat speculative.

If during this SSDC experience you have any questions about NASA or the aerospace industry, feel free to ask your company’s CEO or one of the other volunteers and mentors – many of whom do the same things in real life that you have the opportunity to do at the SSDC over the weekend.