Howdy do there
Today all the teams finally arrived at the Brentwood Inn in Houston. We now have in total 116 students from 4 different countries working in "Companies" preparing their designs for a colony on Mars.
All the teams conducted their inital planning sessions and divided their members into their respective areas of concern. ie structural engineering, human factors, automation etc.
Tomorrow we will be travelling to the Gulruth Convention Center to begin Day 1 of the competition. Essentially the first day comprises of special presentations given by engineers and scientists who either work for or retired from NASA. Of note are people like Norman Chaffee who throughout his career in NASA worked on the Apollo program, the Space Shuttle and also the Mars Rovers during his extensive career with NASA. I had the pleasure of meeting Norman and discussing many exciting concepts he has developed with regard to special activities for Aerospace Science classes. I will be interviewing Norman tomorrow and will post my discussion with him here on the blog.
Yesterday we all went to Houston city for a visit during the afternoon. It is really a beautiful city with extensive parklands and highly modern city center and an amazing wall of water fountain that was a big hit with everybody.
All the team expressed a keen desire to visit a shopping mall so we went to La Galleria and spent several hours browsing the shops and stores. I found two interesting shops one selling live hermit crabs in brightly painted shells and the other being the Discovery shop with all the gizmos and gadgets that i really love.
Later that evening we went to the Kemah Board walk situated by the sea side in the Gulf of Mexico and took in the sights and sounds of a truly American vista. Their was live music, Juggling with fire sticks and a crazy fountain with lots of kids getting wet. It was nice to see how the locals enjoy their evenings.

The next two days will be highly intensive and the real test of everyones capability. I am looking forward to bringing you all news of how we progress during the competition.
Bye for now
Sam