About the session
The competition was to design and manufacture a platform for rescue operation. The mission for the winning apprenticeship team, who were from Bombardier, was to utilise existing materials on the Moon (the lunar base contents, old Apollo mission vehicles and lunar materials) and build a vehicle that would allow them to rendezvous with the rescue craft. They were to assume that all the Apollo mission vehicles were within 90 km of the lunar base. The lunar base contains two electric vehicles that can accommodate two people, 500 kg of cargo and have a range of 200 km, two sets of spare batteries for the electric vehicles, sufficient solar panels to allow unlimited recharging of these batteries, a basic workshop containing a manual lathe, manual mill and a 3D printer (which can produce parts with max. dimensions 500 mm x 500 mm x 250 mm), with a very wide range of raw materials required for each machine, a large quantity of compressed air in cylinders, water and hand tools. The team was required to propose a means of rendezvousing with the rescue craft and providing an explanation of how they would manufacture this device. This required designing a device suitable for the purpose of lifting and holding the team at 1000 m for five minutes and consideration of how the device could be manufactured within the restrictions of the lunar base.
