A story about how we decided to nuke an asteroid.

Speaking out against humans, vodka fuel, fake democracy, sending prisoners on an asteroid, Martian pancakes, and much more.

Last August, my friend went through an amazing program and he encouraged me to apply for the next year. It’s organized every year by the Foundation for International Space Education(FISE). They’ve been doing this for over 20 years.

Every time, 50 high school students from all over the world come to Texas to design the Mars mission. They live with and are mentored by industry leaders: astronauts, aerospace engineers, executives, and scientists.

Last 2 years, the program went online due to covid and changed its name from United Space School to Global Space School (GSS1 in 2020, GSS2 in 2021). The mission students had to develop also changed from Mars colonization to asteroid mining.

How to apply?

It’s hard to get in because there are not only limited spots but also limited application opportunities. If you want to apply, you can do so through your school (if it's a FISE partner), alumni, local space agency, or direct application (1–5 spots each year max).

1. You submit biographical info(full name, email, address, school info) — it’s usually hard to get there if you’re not from a partner school😭. No essays(at least, for Russia), the cut is made by making this application not available to all initially.
2. You go through an interview(there are questions are about your personal qualities as well as technical/science space-related questions).

We are mining Psyche!!!

We were given 3 topics to choose from:

• mining,
• manufacturing,
• transportation.

Our team decided to go with mining, then we chose Psyche as an asteroid. ☄️ It is up to 85% valuable metals and is huge — 220 km in diameter.

Dealing with the lack of fundamental data.

With almost no info on the Internet about asteroid mining and even less information about the asteroid itself, we had to use bits of information to develop a cohesive solution. We had the help of mentors yet even they could not have answers to the big questions(obviously) — there is almost no data about asteroids available and the tech isn’t there. Not many people are looking into this field now. You can only try to find the answer that is less wrong, not the “right” answer. And mentors were really helpful with this.

The importance of good questions.

Mentors(the board) have years(more like decades, actually) of expertise in the space industry. They gave us a lot of feedback based on their experience. Not just feedback, I think the most valuable part was them asking good questions that guided us. Certain questions were focused on some important part of the mission which we missed out on. Some we needed to understand if our ideas make sense.

Huge thanks to the board, the headteachers, and the team mentors! They were absolutely amazing and so-so helpful.

It’s a rare case when mentors were truly helpful and truly had the needed expertise to give +- niche feedback(I will mention it again: in the case of asteroid mining, there is not one person who can give you any accurate answers at this time).

Our superpower.

The superpower tool we used was Miro. It helped us to: break down ideas into tiny pieces and evaluate each one of them → see our weak and strong points → figure out specific questions for additional research and “to-ask-mentors”.

#mirofangirl

Where does the name KorOfSpace come from?

Easy!

Korolev — Soviet aerospace engineer who put the first human+space station in space.

Korol — king from Russian→ kings of space.

Kor sounds like the “core” → center of space.

We had 3 astronaut quest speakers for Q&As.

Michael Baker

who told me about the difference between the Russian and American space culture.

Apparently(no, not at all — knew that) — it’s in Russian culture to wait till the very last minute. If it’s working why bother(even on a space station)? Yet Russians know the very last moment where they need to start working on something so they fix it before it breaks.

We are more chill, Americans have deadlines. We improvise, Americans have strict rules and guidelines.

Chris Hadfield

who said that we might see international collaboration on the Moon, as well as commercial projects on the Moon pretty soon. Plus, the space station is not coming anywhere anytime soon.

Sunita Williams

who touched on the importance of seeing people like you doing things you want to reach.

Ex: it would encourage more girls to go into space if there were more role models which I thought was super interesting. For me(I want to be a tech entrepreneur), there are no many female role models. Elizabeth Holmes?? Hmm, no tnx.

Meet the team!

The most human loving team of introverts

Aka, we went against the system and decided not to kill 3–7 humans for this mission.

Again, each team was responsible for developing an asteroid mining mission. There are points you must cover in your solution, one was about humans onboard(and all the specifics of doing so). We hated that idea:

• the mission takes place approx 10 years from now -> robotic systems will become more advanced, advanced enough to handle the mission;
• on a contrary, humans won’t advance that fast — by that I mean their physiological and mental health capabilities, even 10 years from now we will be worried about sending humans to Mars which is 2x closer to Earth;
• it would be a long journey by distance and by time, 10 year+ in space living as far as 600M km from Earth;
• it makes a mission much more expensive and harder to plan if you choose to send humans who will most likely die(or develop severe conditions) anyway;
• robotics and AI will advance drastically, radiation protection and other tech needed for a safe human experience in space probably won’t.

slide from our deck

The first step for us was making the rules less dumb(excluding the human element).

Our team also loved this Starbase tour by Elon.

Robotic systems that will do just fine. Why send 5 humans to die on a 10-year journey 600M km from Earth when you don’t need to?

Our team agreed that we shouldn’t send humans to Psyche, and I convinced them to push the idea forward(together) to the board. We frazzle out everyone in the program😂. First, our team coach, the headteachers, and then the CEO with the board.

We talked to the CEO, Francesco, on our board meeting call, he offered us to weigh all the pros and cons. The cons did not outweigh. I should say that everyone in the program was super supportive and they loved how we didn’t blindly follow the rules but questioned them and defended our points.

In the end, we learned that the human element requirements were given to us so we can experience planning a human mission. Not that NASA actually planned on sending innocent humans to the asteroid(that is very far) anytime soon(the next 10–20 years is soon).

Actually, Anton offered to send prisoners there as a form of punishment.

So we won. But we were still asked to include our research on the human element in the deck.

In our final pitch, we said that we do not recommend taking humans but we still explored the possibility, and “here’s what we came up with…”.

Now, to the nuking…

It’s a “clickbait”, obviously. We just wanted to use small explosives to “crack” parts of the very dense asteroid.

It’s one of the solutions that seem to make the most sense right now.

Martian pancakes

We settled on the idea of using railgun to deliver materials to Mars. The delivery system isn’t perfect yet so the barrels with materials won’t quite come on Mars in a form of barrels. A metaphor we’re using to explain it is the Martian global pancake(as if it is flattened around the Martian surface, like a pancake).

Would you do it again? How would you rate the experience?

Definitely would do it again! It was amazing. I can highlight multiple things.

You get exposed to industry professionals,

many are alumni, many are the original program organizers.

• it allows you to get insider info on certain things(in a good way xD),
• they are willing to help with anything, super-nice people,
• it’s a hell of a network.

You get exposed to space tech,

• it’s like an accelerator to build space tech knowledge.

You get exposed to all kinds of cultures,

there are people from all over the world — from the US, to New Zealand, Italy, Brazil, South Africa, etc.

• there’s a culture faire,
• you make friends from around the world,
• you can finally make sure that New Zealand exists(or doesn’t), or if Russians have bears as pets, or if Italians eat pasta every day.

You get exposed to how capable you are, you train your teamwork & problem-solving skills.

• dealing with lack of fundamental data and sleep,
• and still coming up with great ideas,
• dealing with different cultures on your team, and realizing how similar you actually are.

Tips — be the activator!

/applies to any program you’re in/

1. Activate things — start a Discord, organize wonder.me, share cool tools and resources, etc.
2. Don’t be shy — it’s a very safe space with very amazing people.
3. Make connections — with students and with all your mentors. It’s hard to do online so go to steps 1 and 2.
4. Collaborate with other teams go to steps 1, 2, and 3.
5. Reach out to headteachers and board with questions. Ask them to meet with you on zoom to get feedback and their ideas.
6. Do your homework. Prep for the Q&A sessions and meetings, ask meaningful questions.
7. Organize your teamwork well(don’t say it, don’t say it: *screams MIRO*).
8. You don’t have to have all the answers. When you don’t have the answers, share your thinking process(Miro is good to help illustrate it).
9. Question everything, it’s okay to disagree.

P.S. the vodka fuel is an inside joke. The only thing I can uncover is: “we will take vodka and coffee on a mission, it will fix everything”. Fake democracy is an inside joke based on true events. Oh, we also covered/re-made Olivia Rodrigo songs(plz, don’t sue us) over some drama that we went through.

Feel free to reach out with any Qs or connection requests :) If you’re from Russia, I can help you apply.

Written by dashanikolaeva.com ->or dashanikolaeva.squarespace.com while squarespace is trying to transfer my main domain🤡.