* Illustration: Pietari Posti * Four couch-sized contraptions, all clearly homebuilt, sit inside a cavernous building at the Santa Maria, California, fairgrounds. One, made of unfinished wood, has denim conveyor belts running over purple and orange plastic beads. It's the brainchild of a boiler engineer from Michigan, whose girlfriend sewed the belts. Another, cobbled together by a systems analyst from nearby Arroyo Grande, features a set of steel trays attached to a long bicycle chain. A team of Los Angeles engineers used precisely machined aluminum and incorporated a toothed rotor that spins like a waterwheel. The tallest of the bunch, standing about 5 feet high, is a clattering assemblage of aluminum scoops mounted on a red conveyor. It represents a year and a half of work by 11 University of Missouri students, two of whom drove 30 hours to get the thing here. They're still scrambling to apply the finishing touches, slapping masking tape on the cups and adjusting bungee cords to keep it upright.
In a moment, the machines will face their opponent: a heap of fake moondust. This is the Regolith Excavation Challenge, a NASA-sponsored competition aimed at applying outsider ingenuity to space colonization. "We think of it as DIY punk rock meets high tech," says Matt Everingham, a fresh-faced engineer with the California Space Authority, the trade group cohosting the contest.
NASA hopes to establish a human settlement on the moon, and humans need oxygen. By happy coincidence, oxygen is one of the main components — more than 40 percent by mass — of regolith, the fine dust that blankets the lunar surface. Theoretically, if you heat up all that silicon dioxide, calcium oxide, iron oxide, and so on, the O2 will bubble right out, good for inhalation and maybe even fuel for the rocket ride home. Of course, you have to collect the stuff first. The task facing the competitors is to scoop up at least 150 kilos in 30 minutes. Teams that succeed will qualify for a shot at $250,000 in prize money.
Real moondust being in short supply here on Earth, the organizers have provided a sandbox filled with 8 tons of finely ground gray-black basalt, which approximates lunar regolith's physical properties — heavy and dense, with grains that lock together like wet beach sand. Per NASA's specification for the mission, the machines have to do their thing on just 30 watts of power. That's about as much juice as a computer monitor uses in sleep mode.
Why devote your spare time — and garage space — to gathering moondust? "Money and pride," says Geoffrey Pulk, the Michigan engineer. "I watched a couple of the other competitions." He's talking about previous NASA contests that solicited designs for a space elevator-climber and a lunar lander. "I thought, ‘I can do this,'" Pulk adds.
Over the next several hours, the moon proves a harsh mistress. The steel-tray machine digs for the full 30 minutes but manages to move only about 80 kilos — much of which spills off the sides. A scoop on Pulk's denim-clad contraption jams after a few minutes. The fancy rotor device freezes up.
The Missouri students go last. They fuss with final adjustments before the judges flip the switch. The cups churn forward a few inches — and grind to a halt. Everyone watches hopefully, until smoke starts streaming from the machine's power supply.
Joel Logue, one of the students, puts on a brave face: "I feel a little sad, but also proud that we made it here." They'll be back next year, he says. Why not? The total purse will be up to $750,000. That's $5,000 a kilo — not bad for shoveling dirt.
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