Wednesday, December 16, 2015

16.12. One hundred concepts?!


HEY, tonight we tried to categorise and choose good concepts from ~100 different ones. That's not too easy, but you know what, we're not stupid either. 
We will continue our evaluating process, and choose the best combinations from everyones ideas, which we can prototype and develop even further in 2016. 

However, tonight was the last official meeting of 2015, so it's individual work for the rest of the year. We will still post some holiday cheers in here, and in our Facebook!

Thanks, bye for now! :) 

Monday, December 14, 2015

Pre-Christmas party Bowling!

Hey, and happy early Christmas to us! 

BioMARS and Team Red Sandbox teamed up and went bowling together, to a local bowling bar called "Cosmic" (Get it? Working with NASA? Mars? Cosmic?). It's important to relax between working on a difficult challenge and studying hard, and what better way than with the great people you also work with?


Our bowlers were prepared for the black light, which made white clothes glow!
Hely, Kristina, and Ana making the pins scared for their lives :)

Perhaps Joni is giving Maria some tips? :)

There were no winners or losers, but we all had a great time! Thank you, Team Red Sandbox, let's not let this be the last time :)


Thursday, December 10, 2015

9.12. Concepts here, concepts there


Hey!
So we've been individually coming up with greenhouse/ food growing concepts for the past week, and used yesterday to sharing our concept-ideas. Then we decided to check out a few of those more deeply, and used the Triz40-website and 39 parameters related to that. 

It all seemed quite complex at first, but once we tried it, it started to make sense, and it's a great way to develop our concepts further. Next time we'll have even more concepts to develop. 

Work in progress:


Until next time, dear readers!

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Interviewed for the internet

Hello, a brief announcement;
Karelia UAS second year students interviewed one of our team member, Maria, about our project.

Check our the video interview HERE.
(The site is in finnish, the interview is partly in english/finnish)

Also, remember to follow our ABC's in our Facebook!

Thanks for following :)


Thursday, December 3, 2015

2.12. Another Q&A, yeah!

Hey!

Today we had a NASA plant physiologist, Dr. Raymond Wheeler, tell us about plant growth experiments and requirements that we should take into account while designing a new concept. We had a lot of specific questions for him considering our challenge, and his answers will help us a lot. 

Listening to Dr. Wheeler intensively.
We have to think about small-scale testing, look through previous designs and researches, before deciding anything. Luckily we have December and January for this!

Here we are, a little smarter than we were before. Can you spot all 8 bioMARTIANS that were there? ;)
Until next time, thanks for reading!

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

1.12. Firefighters or astronauts?

 Hello!

Our dark snowless December started off with a visit to the North Karelia Rescue Department, located in Joensuu, and we were lucky enough to learn about the physical requirements of fire fighters, smoke divers, and rescue personnel.

(Surprisingly similarly sounding to astronaut-training.)

We also got very important information about communication within a big organisation, when there's no time to spare.

Our presenter, Jani Kareinen (in the right picture), also showed the firetrucks and the personnels gym to us.
Most of us are now wondering if we're also able to do over 40 squats with 45 kg on our back, although that's probably impossible.

These guys handle nearly 4000 rescue missions in a year, and not even one of them includes that milk you forget in the fridge and it turns bad. They don't have time to rescue everything, but it's surely nice to have them when we really need!

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

18.11. Chitchat with Dr. Camarda

Hey!
Tonight our bioMARS had a chance to speak with Dr. Charles Camarda, as he is one of our main specialists and teachers during this Epic Challenge. Of course we had talked with him previously, but to have a personal chat to tell about our recent work, and to ask more specific questions was very nice.

<- Here are our faces right before starting the chat. The photo is blurry because the photographer must've been shaky from excitement. ;)

After that we had a Q&A with Space Veggies, whose mission a few years back was very similar to our goals. They kindly answered our questions and were also interested in our challenge and progress.

Bye now!

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

11.11. Q&A

Hey guys!
This Wednesday was partly a Q&A with ISRU expert Mr. Garrett Carman, and partly discussing about our communal knowledge on plant growing and food properties.

ISRU stands for "In Situ Resource Utilization", and that means making what we need from where we are and what we can take from there, for example, on Mars. We talked about creating energy and material, like glass fibre from the regolith or soil. Thank you, Mr. Carman, for answering our questions!

We will now make lessons for each other considering our challenge, so everyone learns from everyone and in the end everyone knows everything. ; )


Wednesday, November 4, 2015

4.11. Deep (Mars) diving

Hello!
It's been a long day, it's 8:30 pm again, and we started leaving the lecture. Only the girls stayed to take a picture for you guys to see our tired but happy faces.

What is our agenda now? In November we will dive deeper in our specific challenge (of growing food on Mars) and actually we had a nice way of rephrasing that to make our new problem:

  1. “To develop an Earth-independent Food Production Capacity Increasing System”
  1. In short, EFPCIS.
  1. This is beautiful, we'll go with this one. 
  1. Also, check our Facebook-page for our upcoming ABC's!

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

3.11. Sauna


Hey! Tonight our team and the Team Red Sandbox, were invited to sauna by our online working/ learning environment developer, Arcusys! 

The night also included us talking about the online environment, and together making it more suitable for our needs. For more information about the company, visit their site here.

NOW that is November already, we start focusing on our specific challenges, and that means reading a ton of articles and information. We try to keep you updated, thanks for the support! :)

Remember to stay warm in the cold Finnish autumn (or if you're not from Finland, still, go to a sauna if you can, really)!

Saturday, October 31, 2015

31.10. Happy Halloween!

Trick or treat! 
Tonight we decided to leave studying for a moment, and celebrate a little. We went to one of our team members home, Krista's place, and carved some pumpkins, ate some apple pie (made by Kristina) and shared some laughs about life in general. Can you recognise some characters from our group picture? 

 Carving pumpkins can get a little messy, but the results were great! One pumpkin was a little stinkier, so we carved it outside to ease the pain. The finished Jack-o-lanterns have a alien/space-theme, and one has our logo on it! 

Timo played a little guitar for us, and here's also a close-up of Mariia's costume, how cool is that! Our group wen't artistic with all our costumes, even the finnish people (Halloween is not very Finnish); Sonja, Jesse, Timo, and Krista!


                             


                         







Here is also a picture of a little party-crasher, Maul, with the Jack-o-lanterns!
We're all hoping everyone's Halloween is more treats than tricks,

Yours truly,

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

28.10. Lesson and presentations

Good morning! Yesterday (28.10) was a long day, we stayed and studied till half past 9 o'clock PM.

First we learned about information searching, Janne Hietala from Arcusys was kind enough to come and educate us. The information about searching for information was new for most of us, and super helpful for the future. Thanks!

This was also the first time we met after publishing our first drafts of our Mars-presentations, so we talked about them, and asked more questions from each other.

Now we begin working on our presentations again, making them (hopefully) better. Everything is possible after a good night's sleep!

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

21.10. Work hard, play hard?

Hey!

We and the other Epic Challenge team, "The Red Sandbox" went and watched the movie The Martian yesterday!

Afterwards we talked a little about the differences of the movie and NASAs real Mars plans. We sure hope they're not sending Matt Damon there, he seems to get into a lot of trouble in space.

But we enjoyed the movie and suggest You go see it as well!


PS. About our current workflow, we are individually studying different Mars-themes, which we will then (at the end of the month) teach to each other!

Thursday, October 15, 2015

15.10. Our Facebook-page and official logo!


Hello everyone! We are super excited to show our official logo at last. 
You can also check out our Facebook-page now!

We are planning a trip to the movies soon, can You guess what movie we want to see? ;)
Comment what could it be!
Thank YOU for reading our blog, please like and share our Facebook if you want to follow us more!

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

7.10. Start of something new

October is here! Whether you are taking part of inctober, spooktober, or just attending your lives as usual, you can also follow the start of our actual epic challenge now!

That's right, we're getting down to business, the real deal, finding out ways to grow food on the red planet.

We're going to work as teachers to one another, and getting ourselves acquainted with Mars.
Also, our Facebook-page is coming, so stay tuned for that (though it's long overdue, better late than never!)

Also feel free to comment, give feedback, what things you'd like to know about us or about our work?

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

29.9. The 4-hour ICED-workshop!

Hello internet, today was the culmination day of our September Challenge (of teaching the ICED-method to "strangers" however they ended up being our acquaintances). So we hosted, shared knowledge, learned in the process, and (kind of) succeeded!

Many of our own team members were unavailable to attend, which was kind of sad, but also good for the participants of the workshop, to not feel that pressured with a thousand eyes looking at them all the time.

 1. First of all, our team told briefly what the ICED is, what phases it contains, and how the actual problem solving should happen with the method.

 2. The participants started working. They searched the internet for existing solutions, and inspiration for their problem, which was called "The Paper Bridge -challenge". The participants had to come up with a way to connect two tables, that were approximately 1 meter away from each other, by using only paper and a small amount of tape etc. They also had to design the bridge to hold as much weight as possible.
3. They soon started to experiment on how they can fold paper, make the structures strong, and what are papers actual limitations as a material. The team really came up with surprising solutions, which was great!


4. Of course the team could ask us for additional information and tips. The team couldn't actually try their bridge out before the last test, just make small-scale models of it. Their smaller models were efficient and so they went for glory with the best idea.




5. The results were working, and were made according to our requirements. Of course we had to put the structure to the ultimate test, of how much weight it could actually hold!




THANK YOU everyone for attending the workshop, great job!
Now our BioMars-team will rest for a day or two, and then….. Focus on our own Challenge of growing food on Mars!

28.9. Check, check... wait what?

Tonight five of our team members met for a final run through for the ICED workshop, that is going to take place tomorrow!
We are nicely prepared, but also noticed some final corrections that needed to happen, like actually having participants for the workshop! This time the participants will be someones acquaintances from our team, but we need to test our teachings efficiency, before approaching potential sponsors or corporations.

Facing practical difficulties, like "how do we get the sound to come out of this computer?", or "when will we have the coffee break?", will put different difficulties nicely into perspective, like we also had to figure out "how do we teach this ICED-method to strangers in 4 hours?"

BUT more on that workshop and the outcome of it tomorrow, let's hope the workshop works, like we did work for it to work!

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

22.9. Hard work (thankfully with coffee)

Hello! 
Today our group went from all talk, to all action! We tested out our own workshop, that other people are going to try out next week while they learn the ICED-method. We also prepared a nice prezi-presentation for them, to make our goal clear and to help them understand what the ICED is. 


We had lots of fun, even though it's hard work, because the whole workshop and this warm-up September Challenge (of teaching ICED to others, because we ourselves are going to need it) is going to go great! 

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

16.9. Decisions, decisions… !

Hello!
Today has been a huge day for our September challenge of teaching ICED for strangers. We settled on a specific challenge for them to solve (but we're not telling the subject yet, so there's no cheating) :)

It's strange how much has to be taken into account when making something like this happen; the participants, the location, the materials for the workshop, and what is perhaps the most valuable thing; to make it fun and understandable for everyone!

Our team had a short ~3-hour meeting regarding all those things, and we had a blast even organising this, so the outcome is going to be super!

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

9.9. Focusing our energy



Hello! Today after hearing a lecture about the ICED, we had our group talk about what two workshops we will be focusing on from now on. Exciting things await those who enter our ICED workshops!
We have visited the NASA Engineering and Safety Center to get information. Maybe you should too? 

Also we took some photos about us, because if there isn't a picture, it never happened? Well this is happening (we got pictures to prove).

Sunday, September 6, 2015

4.9. Working on a workshop


Today we came up with a bunch of ideas for the ICED workshop. Let us explain what it is:

Although our main goal as a team is to figure out plant (food)-growing on Mars by the end of May 2016, we started with getting familiar with problem-solving-method developed by NASA, called ICED (aka. Innovative Conceptual Engineering Design), and we have to be able to teach it to others by the end of September. We will also use the ICED-process in the challenge "How can we grow food on Mars?", but first learning how to teach it to others is very a great way to make sure we understand it ourselves.

However, we also have to decide what type of a challenge the group to which we'll be teaching ICED, will solve. They have four hours to learn the whole thing, so we can't actually make them grow food on Mars, now can we! We came up with eleven fun challenges, from which three were selected. Here we go!

2.9. Starting ICED


ICED (Developed by NASA) stands for "Innovative Conceptual Engineering Design", and it basically is a 4-step way to solve problems, such as "How can I boil an egg without electricity?"
First off we have to learn the ICED-methodology ourselves. We have had very informative lectures from Dr. Charles Camarda about the subject, and how to apply it. Now we have to fully embrace the study and teach it (at the end of September) to others.

As our group is still "young", this kind of warm-up-challenge is great. Many ideas occurred on our first meeting, and we are highly motivated to take on this September Challenge of ICED, after which we'll be starting our Epic Mars Challenge of coming up with a way to grow food on Mars.