Objective
Elon Musk and SpaceX have made surprisingly fast progress on Starship, and the rocket launches at the end of the quarter. However, Elon hasn’t figured out anything else about this plan: what you’ll eat, what you’ll do for fun, what you’ll wear, where you’ll sleep, how to get around, how you’ll breathe, how you’ll avoid freezing, how you’ll avoid sublimating, how you’ll avoid being irradiated, how you’ll operate the life support systems —you know, the basics.
To that end, more practical minds at SpaceX have put out a request for proposals (RFP) for solutions that solve any or all of these challenges. Our task is to to develop, implement, and test a Portable Offworld Training And enTertainment Object (POTATO) before being strapped into the rocket and shipped to Mars.
To that end, more practical minds at SpaceX have put out a request for proposals (RFP) for solutions that solve any or all of these challenges. Our task is to to develop, implement, and test a Portable Offworld Training And enTertainment Object (POTATO) before being strapped into the rocket and shipped to Mars.
Our Design
We built a disaster preparedness simulation to instruct future Mars colonists on what to do in the event of a hostile alien attack. In our simulated scenario, aliens have disabled the Mars base's defenses and breached its wall, causing the interior to rapidly depressurize. With just 60 seconds of usable oxygen remaining, the player must restart the generator with a hand-crank to reactivate the base defenses, then manually repair the breach so the base can re-pressurize. Aliens are lurking around every corner, and the player will need to fend them off with their anti-alien flamethrower before they can continue with the repair effort.