High-Level Project Summary
Those of us who believe that our future and space will intersect at one point, we were aware of the value of that information and data provided by these studies. And for middle school students, we have developed an application reflecting the difficulties experienced during space flight with all its reality.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
The trail to Mars: Can you keep your crew alive. Before choosing our topic from this area, we had an idea about space travel from the past to the present. We were aware of the value of that information and data provided by these studies. One of the biggest influences on our choice of this area was to reflect the difficulties faced by astronauts in space with the truth.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” We gave different answers to this question. Now we want this job, being an astronaut, to reach young people with all its reality, not just in science-fiction movies.
For this purpose, we started our way by researching. We conducted research from different sources, especially the knowledge that NASA provided to us. We examined all factors, from the physiological effects of the space environment on astronauts, to the provision of basic needs. Then, we analyzed this situation by dividing it into four parts.
Let's start with diet and exercise first. We mentioned that the differences we encounter in the space environment have some effects. Changes in the skeletal and muscular system, especially loss of muscle mass, muscle weakness and decrease in mineral density in the bones can be seen. There may be a deterioration in the heart muscles, and in a possible landing, this will not even allow the astronaut to move. We cannot discuss how important nutrition and exercise. The application, which we prepared, we had chosen foods, which have high nutritional value because we knew that not every food can go to space. We also pointed out that astronauts must exercise every day, and accordingly, we created a health bar that goes up and down.
In our application, we also reflected the difficulties created by the concept of time in space. We underlined that it is necessary to sleep at certain hours to maintain sleeping patterns. Again, we created a sleep bar, allowing it to decrease and increase according to the player's behavior.
Radiation and gravity-free environment also have serious effects on astronauts. In addition to this situation, the presence of the "long distance" factor again shows the difficulty of fulfilling this task.
Another aspect that we want to remark in the game, which is different from the physical part of the job, is psychology. Experts focus on the psychological problems caused by traveling in a closed and narrow tin flying in the endless vacuum of space. They emphasized that mental health as important as physical health. Researchers declare that stress caused by space flight also affects the working efficiency of astronauts. Therefore, choosing the right astronauts is a big importance. The scoring of users according to the choices they make is entirely related to their potential to successfully complete these tasks. We even thought of asking users' thoughts at the end of the game and preparing a questionnaire about how psychologically they are suitable for this task.
We believe that bringing such an educational application life can make people, especially young ones, want to become astronauts by relying on more realistic foundations. We hope that this application can create beneficial effects.
Space Agency Data
We drew our application’s graphics by considering photos of space shuttles and videos about how astronauts live in space shared by Canada Space Agency and NASA. We tried to make the scenes and characters look alike to the original ones. We also read NASA’s articles to learn the details about astronauts’ physical activities and sleep. We sincerely thank the institutions for their content that helped us in our project and their efforts in preparing them.
Hackathon Journey
First of all, we checked all the challenges and read the descriptions. This challenge’s contents were so suitable for our interests and abilities. Also we thought learning how to create our own game was pretty interesting. Additionally, reflecting the difficulties that astronauts face in space with all its reality was a big factor for us to choose this field. We had to learn how to use game-creating apps in a very limited time period so we worked almost non-sleep for two and half days. Besides, we were aware of how working on this project would improve us in various ways and that was a great motivation for us. The tutorial videos on the internet were very helpful. We have followed the instructions carefully to do our best. It was a challenging experience but totally worth it. We all had a lot of fun and did a good job in this process dominated by team spirit.
References
Tags
#mars, #nutrion, #diet, #exercise, #psychology, #spacetravel, #radiation, #isolation, #gravity
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.