UE Team Wins NASA Moon Buggy Competition
April 7, 2008
A team of 10 engineering students from the University of Evansville topped the competition at this year's NASA Moon Buggy competition in Huntsville, Alabama, marking the first time a UE team has won the competition.
The National NASA Great Moonbuggy Race was held Saturday April 5, at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. With a time of four minutes, 17 seconds, the UE team beat their nearest competitor by more than 30 seconds.
"This is incredible," said senior Jesse Kahle, project manager for the Moon Buggy. "We're just thrilled that NASA gave us the opportunity to work on this project - a simulation of a real-life project NASA handled in the 1970s. It's been a tremendous learning experience, and to win the competition is just a wonderful bonus."
NASA started the Moon Buggy competition as a way for engineering students across the country to face a real-life design challenge. Creating transportation on the moon was a problem NASA itself tackled through the lunar missions; the competition requires students to follow many of the same rules NASA had to follow to safely travel on the moon at that time.
Each team’s buggy must have two riders – one male, one female – and the buggy has to fit in a four-foot cube. Because there is only limited oxygen for astronauts using such a buggy on the moon, the teams will be judged on the time it takes them to set up their vehicle, as well as the time it takes them to finish the competition’s obstacle course.
Last year's UE team finished in seventh place. However, Kahle noted before the competition that they had managed to cut weight from that project by 15 percent, and improve the turning radius by half. That proved to make the difference, as the UE team outstripped its nearest competitor by 31 seconds.
The UE team included: seniors Jesse Kahle, Ben Sitzman, James McDaniel, Andrea Sonnenschein, and Jaclyn Kern; juniors Grant Johanningsmeier and Travis Goudreau; sophomore Brandon Uzarek; and freshmen Brad Joyce and Wes Kirk.
Competition in the national day-long event included Purdue University Calumet, Colorado School of Mines, Ohio State, University of Central Florida, and Pittsburg State. The competition also included two universities from Canada, two from India, and one from Puerto Rico.
