View the Wheeler power pitch from time stamp the 0:58:13 to 1:05:33.
Wheeler’s team, Effervesce, with Mihir Bellamkonda, Nathaniel Tappin and Ari Satinoff, won first place for their six-minute power pitch at the Conrad Spirit of Innovation Challenge Summit (www.conradchallenge.org) held at the Kennedy Space Center April 9-11 in the category of ‘Giant Leap to Mars’.
The pitch needed to include the need, the science, the feasibility as well as the business case for the idea. The Wheeler team competed against nine other teams from all over the world in the final pitch including a team from India. Wheeler’s team successfully navigated multiple elimination rounds starting in October 2014 and culminating at the Conrad Innovation Summit held at The Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Mihir Bellamkonda represented the Wheeler Magnet team at the summit, as Ari Satinoff and Nathaniel Tappin were unable to attend due to prior commitments.
Wheeler’s team ‘Effervesce’ focused on the design of a bioreactor to produce methane gas efficiently using Mars’s own carbon dioxide and bacteria specializing in converting hydrogen and carbon dioxide to methane. Methane is then used as fuel to power a turbine to produce energy, and the team successfully argued about their design being superior to solar energy as well as thorium based nuclear reactors for fueling a Mars journey.
The Giant Leap to Mars category was introduced as a special category in the Conrad Challenge to recognize and celebrate NASA’s Journey to Mars program intended to allow human exploration of the red planet (http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasas-human-path-to-mars/).
Congratulations students!
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