Space settlement club thinks in future

Students at Tehachapi High School are designing a mining colony to be built on an asteroid later in the 21st century.

The complex project is a warm-up for the members of the Space Settlement Design club as it prepares for the 2011 international Space Settlement Design competition.

Their design must accommodate humans and all their needs, business, operations, and security as well as contingency plans for a catastrophe like radiation contamination or a collision between the asteroid and a cargo vessel.

Some time this fall, the competition organizers will provide the official 2011 Request for Proposal (RFP) for a fictional asteroid colony.

The RFPs are written instructions for the colony's general contractor.

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Section 4.3 of Green's RFP states: “Show spacesuit design, with stowage and donning/doffing procedures and airlock designs for the station as well as those to be built into the asteroid. Show mine design as well as mining equipment.”

Section 4.2, dealing with the human factor, states: “Provide designs of typical residences, clearly showing room sizes; home designs will be no smaller than 600 sq. ft. and no larger than 1,400 sq. ft. Identify sources or manufacture of furniture and appliances. Anticipated demography: married adults 35 percent, unmarried men 35 percent, unmarried women 28 percent, children 2 percent.”

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The colony, according to the RFP, “must provide a safe and robust living and working environment for 2,000 full-time residents, plus an additional transient population of no more than 50 at Initial Operational Capacity (IOC) and increasing by 10 per year for at least 50 years.”



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