Students transform Duke Field hangar into Martian habitats

  • Published
  • By Dan Neely
  • 919th Special Operations Wing Public Affairs
DUKE FIELD, Fla. --  Mars may be millions of miles from Earth, but Friday more than 120 area elementary school students appeared to beam a piece of it to Duke Field.

After hangar space at Eglin Air Force Base became temporarily unavailable, the 919th Special Operations Wing here offered one of its own to help simulate a Martian colony called Marsville.

Sponsored by Eglin's 96th Air Base Wing, Marsville is a collaborative effort between Eglin AFB and the surrounding community's elementary school fifth-grade students, faculty and parents. One of its top goals is to encourage students to pursue careers in science and engineering. This year's event, the 14th of its kind, featured students from Wright, Longwood and Valparaiso elementary schools.

"This is an activity that lets the students explore the possibilities of inhabiting Mars," said Eglin's lead project coordinator Glenda Stewart, a 96th ABW plans and programs specialist who, as a Reservist, serves as assistant NCO in charge of the 919th Mission Support Group.

"The students take seven basic life functions and bring them together in different habitats where they share their detailed information on how they decided to support these basic life systems. This is a very interesting and exciting activity for the students, the teachers, "the parents, and all of the volunteers that are involved."

The event was supported by dozens of volunteers from the 96th ABW's communications, civil engineer, security forces and medical units, as well as the Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate and Duke Field's 919th Maintenance Group. Other volunteers included more than 20 cadets and their instructors from Niceville High School's Air Force Junior ROTC unit.

It didn't take long for the students and their helpers to transform the empty hangar into a bustling Martian neighborhood of sorts. Using massive amounts of plastic sheeting and duct tape, school teams erected ten cube-shaped habitats, each roomy enough to shelter more than 20 'colonists.'

Featured on a long row of tables were several dozen concept projects that students had days earlier fashioned from recyclable household supplies. The students were challenged to construct and present their scale models of the aforementioned life systems: air; water; waste management, food procurement; transportation; communications and recreation.

"It was fun ... it only took two days to build it," Longwood Elementary student Mikey Wells said of his team's air purification system project. "The pollutants are blown into a freezing chamber and frozen into dry ice, then the dry ice is transferred to waste," he explained, as Sean Ownby, his project teammate, pointed to each component.

Moments after their habitats were constructed, groups crawled inside them to eat their lunches. But colony rules mandated that lunches be planned in such a way as to leave behind the least amount of waste. Following lunch, student "waste managers" collected all leftover food, liquids, wrappers or containers and delivered them to 96th Communications Squadron volunteers who weighed the contents, ensuring they were under the mandatory 22-ounce limit per habitat group.

"All of this involves scenarios that challenge them to think outside the box and use creativity and critical thinking skills to solve real-life situations," said Debbie Cross, a teacher at Wright Elementary School. "These experiences will definitely help them in similar classes in both middle and high school."

One of Marsville's key events came when special guest presenter Linda Andruske, lead NASA fuel cell/cryogenics engineer for Space Shuttle Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center, briefed the students on the primary challenges of interplanetary space travel and colonization as well as man's pursuit of ways to overcome them.

According to her career biography, Ms. Andruske was an International Space Station flight controller in Moscow, a mission assurance manager for multiple unmanned launch vehicles and was the sole KSC engineer to support a launch campaign from the closed Cosmodrome Plesetsk in northeastern Russia.

Weeks before this year's Marsville event, several Eglin volunteers visited the participating schools to brief them about their respective specialties as they applied to the seven life system types.

One such volunteer was Master Sgt. Brian Tong, 96th CS wire chief, who briefed the students on the technology they would need to communicate between Earth and Mars, such as deep space network communications system based at locations from California to Spain and Australia.

"The joy of the experience is working with the kids - they're awesome," he said. "It really touches your heart when you see these kids again like this and they recognize you."

At a closing assembly in front of packed bleachers, Col. James Brock, 919th Maintenance Group commander, congratulated all of Marsville's participants and presented coins to the organizers on behalf of the 919th MXG, 919th SOW and host 96th ABW. Ms. Stewart expressed special thanks to Colonel Brock and the entire 919th SOW for the use of the hangar and overall support for what she called "a very highly successful event."