Check out this cool competition coming up in Alabama. The article is from NASA. - First Alert Meteorologist Erin Jordan
Each year around this time, John Tripp walks across a lunar surface, pondering the challenges ahead for explorers brave enough to take on its cratered terrain.
For now, his "moon" is a winding ribbon of cement footpaths looped around Huntsville's famed U.S. Space and Rocket Center, where Tripp is a construction foreman.
By month's end, a half-mile of the paths will be transformed into a harsh lunar landscape that will test the engineering savvy and physical endurance of about 400 high school and college students on 68 teams. They're converging here April 4-5 for NASA's 15th annual Great Moonbuggy Race, organized by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
The students, hailing from 20 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, India and Germany, will race lightweight moonbuggies they designed, based on the original lunar rover first used during the Apollo 15 moon mission in 1971. Tripp's construction team will greet them with 17 unique course obstacles, built of plywood and old tires, and covered with 20 tons of gravel and 5 tons of sand. All of it will be reshaped into moon-like ridges, craters, basins and lava-etched "rilles."
The course was designed in 1993 by Dr. Larry Taylor, a lunar geologist at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Dr. J.M. Wersinger, a physics professor at Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., and the Marshall Center's Dr. Frank Six, now the university affairs officer supporting the race.
The course proved so challenging, race planners have added more and more hay bales to the route each year for added safety. Some 175 bales will line the course this year.
Even so, "seatbelts are not optional," Tripp chuckled. "They're a requirement."
The students appear ready for the challenge. For two days, their vehicles will brave the course against the backdrop of some of America's most famous rockets and space vehicles. Cheered on by hundreds of friends and spectators, they'll vie for cash prizes and trophies awarded by NASA and corporate sponsors.
Each moonbuggy starts the competition disassembled and folded for transport -- like the actual rovers flown to the moon in the early 1970s. Each buggy must fit into a space no larger than 4 feet in width, height and length. It must be carried in "collapsed" mode to the starting line, assembled, then checked for all required parts -- fenders, a flag and simulated hardware, including batteries, a communications antenna, radio and TV camera.
Then, they're off. Each rover is piloted by two students: one male, one female. The buggies race against the clock instead of each other. Drivers push hard to conquer each obstacle without exceeding the race's 15-minute time limit -- a new rule in 2008.
Tripp keeps the moonbuggy course safe, but tough. As the person in charge of the course for the past 13 years, he's made a science of getting the right blend of sand and rock, and building the right combinations of steep and shallow features. He has to stay sharp, he said, because student builders grow ever more sophisticated, refining their designs from year to year to field sturdier buggies. The schools also consult with each another. Veterans compare concepts and give new teams free insight.
"That camaraderie is exciting to see," said Tammy Rowan, manager of Marshall's Academic Affairs Office, which organizes the race each year. It's just one of dozens of educational programs and initiatives led by the center, to help attract and inspire America's next generation of scientists, engineers and explorers -- those who will carry on the nation's mission of exploration, to the moon and onward into the solar system.
"NASA's Great Moonbuggy Race doesn't just pit schools against one another," Rowan said. "It's a shared experience for students who love math, science and engineering. We hope it shows them the community and partnership that awaits them in these career fields, and provides practical, hands-on experience to reinforce their class work."
Tripp admits he enjoys making the experience as "practical and hands-on" as possible. His course never fails to keep the pit crews in NASA's repairs tent busy on race day -- welding snapped struts, and replacing bent wheels and sprockets.
But most teams push through, and Tripp likes that too. "Some of them reach the end and just fall over exhausted," Tripp said. "But they get there. That's what it's all about."
For more information on the Moon Buggy Race check out NASA.gov.
Some of you may have heard about the Newseum in Washington D.C., maybe even visited there on a trip to the east coast. You can experience how the news it put together, from print to radio to television, at this interactive museum. Now Buffalo, New York is hoping to build a Weather Experience Center. Right now this state-of-the art interactive museum is in the planning stages but it could become a reality within the next decade. (Hopefully earlier rather than later!) No amusement-like rides in the museum. The goal is to engage people in how weather affects our lives and how we affect weather and our surrounding environment. - First Alert Meteorologist Erin Jordan