On Tuesday, P7 took part in the National Spaceport Competition.  They came up to Secondary for the day and worked on the project in the Meeting Room with Mr Spence and Miss Williamson.  The competition is a collaborative outreach event, designed to promote UK spaceflight with younger audiences and inspire the next generation.

Pupils were giving the brief of designing a UK Space Port in small teams.  They could choose either a Vertical launch site like the one planned for Unst or a Horizontal launch site like one that is planned for Newquay in Cornwall.  Not surprisingly, with the local connection, all of our groups opted to design a Vertical Launch space port.

Pupils had to think about the buildings and facilities required at a space port and then plan accordingly.  The activity took place in two phases.  In phase 1 they could site their buildings and facilities anywhere on their site maps.  In Phase 2, they were given some constraints with information about the quality of the land they were building on and archaeological and important environmental areas they had to avoid.  All the time, the groups were trying to get a balance between the cost, the performance and the environmental impact of their space ports.

Pupils worked really well together in their groups and were fully engaged in the activity throughout the day and learned a lot about spaceports:

“We learned about why they are making the spaceport and we had to design the layout.”

“We learned about what space ports were made up of and that you can have a vertical launch or a horizontal.”

“I learned what space does for us.”

“The main thing I learned was about satellites and how, if they were launched from Unst, it would take one minute to get to about 60 000 feet in the air.”

Their designs will now go forward to be judged by the competition organisers.