www.3ders.org

Jul 6, 2016 | By Alec

The results for NASA and Star Trek’s Replicator Challenge are in. This fantastic competition was launched in February and aimed to get kids of all ages thinking about space, 3D printing and design. The focus was completely on Star Trek’s iconic Replicator – which all 3D printers strive to emulate – and kids of all age groups were asked to design 3D printable tools that enable nutritious eating in outer space. Though there were more than 400 excellent entries, Kyle Corrette’s radiation-powered Melanized Fungarium (Teen Group) and Nagasai Sreyash Sola’s Astro Mini Farm (Junior Group) stood out head and shoulders from the rest.

It was another inspiring competition (the third edition of the Future Engineers project) that introduced hundreds of kids from across the US to 3D printing for the very first time. The competition ran until May 1, with participants being interviewed by a team of judges (including astronaut Charles Camarda) over the past two months. Aside from NASA and Star Trek, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Foundation, Makerbot and Made In Space, Inc. were also involved in the competition.

And the stakes were high: winners of the two age groups (Teens of ages 13-19 and Juniors from 5-12) will win a trip to NYC to visit the Intrepid Air and Space Museum's ‘Starfleet Academy’ experience, and can even tour the decommissioned Space Shuttle Enterprise with a NASA astronaut as a guide. They’ll get a VIP tour of Makerbot’s headquarters in New York as well. Moreover, four finalists from each age group will get a 3D printer donated to their school.

What’s more, this third edition of the Future Engineers project only featured one rule: the 3D printable entry should help astronauts to eat nutritious meals by 2050, and needs to be 3D printable in space from sustainable materials. Entries could thus consist of utensils, containers, disposal units – anything they can think of. Even teacups like captain Picard used for the iconic Replicator. “Sustainability will be a critical aspect of long duration space missions,” NASA’s Niki Werkheiser said when kicking off the Star Trek Replicator Challenge. “It will require off-planet manufacturing technologies to create all of the items our future astronauts need.”

But the main goal, was of course, to get kids thinking about space exploration and 3D printing. And as the entry gallery reveals, the kids did fantastically. After a long process, however, Kyle Corrette from Desert Vista High School in Phoenix, Arizona (Teen Group) and Nagasai Sreyash Sola from Eagle Ridge Middle School in Ashburn, Virginia (Junior) were picked as winners.

Both of their designs are impressive. Corrette’s Melanized Fungarium is essentially a 3D printable miniature farm that provides an organic growth bed that can be used over long periods of time. The Arizona teenager envisions a system where melanized fungus is used to grow using radioactivity as an energy source. While you might be surprised, this doesn’t come straight out of the teenager’s imagination. Instead, this type of fungus was discovered at the Chernobyl disaster site in 2007, and turns gamma radiation into energy. And as ionizing radiation is everywhere in space, it could serve as a perfect renewable food source. The Fungarium itself consists of an outer shell, housing for an organic growth bed and an irrigation system. Water is pumped through the irrigation to the growth bed to reach the fungus, and the entire thing can be 3D printed in a microgravity environment with waterproof plastic. A realistic, yet ambitious system.

But to Corrette himself, the design process was mostly a fantastic communal experience. “In this challenge, it was amazing to be treated as an equal by such accomplished professionals,” Corrette said. “I felt like my ideas were taken seriously and I learned a lot about the 3D modeling process. I feel very proud to be recognized on a national scale for my design, especially since I put a lot of hard work into it. More importantly, though, even though this was a competition, every participant was working towards the same goal. In that sense, I liked feeling as if were all on the same team.”

But perhaps even more impressive is Sola’s Astro Mini Farm, because it’s comparable to the Corrette’s entry despite his young age. In a nutshell, the Atro Mini Farm is a small 3D printable transparent greenhouse that can be completely made from Martian soil. Unlike the Fungarium, it uses solar power to grow food. But as Mars receives less sunlight than Earth, the Astro Mini Farm essentially acts as a magnifying glass to gather energy. And as Mars also has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, the designer added a pump that periodically pressurizes container. Of course, the farm also features a slanted hole in its base to transfer soil to the pot and provide the plants with water.

Remarkably, it doesn’t contain any electronic parts, making it completely 3D printable. The only caveat is that researchers will first need to extract a transparent material from Martian soil, but we still have more than three decades to do so. “It was really an intriguing learning experience and I learned a lot about space, Mars and 3D printing,” Sola said. “It was a life-time opportunity to talk to astronauts, NASA, ASME and Made in Space officials. It is like one of my dreams coming true.”

While we’ll have to wait and see if either of these farms ever become reality, the Replicator challenge at least emphasized that a bright generation of makers is on its way. Aside from a trip to NYC, Sola and Corrette have also won a MakerBot® Replicator Mini Compact 3D printer for their school and a PancakeBot for their family – just like the other six finalists.

The finalists from each age group are:

Teen Group (Ages 13-19)

Kyle Corrette, Phoenix, Arizona – Melanized Fungarium (winner)

Ansel Austin, Cupertino, California – Spirulina Farm (finalist)

Thomas Salverson, Gretna, Nebraska – Multi-Purpose Mug (finalist)

Navya Annapareddy, Haymarket, Virginia – Cosmoaquaponics (finalist)

Junior Group (Ages 5-12)

Sreyash Sola, Ashburn, Virginia – Astro Mini Farm (winner)

Emily Takara, Cupertino, California – Bioreactor Ornament (finalist)

Tobias Platt, Hoboken, New Jersey – Water Condenser (finalist)

Owen DuFrene, Portland, Oregon – E-Z Blender (finalist)

 

 

Posted in 3D Printing Application

 

 

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