Siblings Nathan and Barbara Schloss, with their team, MAST, from Milken Community High School in Los Angeles, placed third in the Lunar Exploration Category of last year’s Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Awards competition. The competition invites high school teams of up to five students to create a plan, including both technical and business aspects, for an original concept in one of three science and technology categories.

Team MAST envisioned an alternative method to get a payload to the Moon. Instead of using a rocket launched from Earth's surface, they proposed a railgun that would launch its payload from low earth orbit. The railgun, which would be entirely solar-powered, conserves fuel and natural resources while providing a simple method for transport to the Moon.

We caught up with Barbara and Nate to learn more about their participation in the competition.

How did you find out about the competition and decide to get involved?

Nate: In its first year (2007-08), the competition was a trade show where visitors voted on whose idea they thought was the best. I went with the finalist team from my school and helped them with their booth. They won first place in the Personal Spaceflight Category (which was the only category at the time) for their concept of using sunglasses to monitor vital signs in a non-invasive manner. I wanted to go again the following year and my sister and I decided to enter together with three friends.

In the 2008-09 competition, student teams designed a project in one of three categories: lunar exploration, personal spaceflight, or renewable energy (in response to Al Gore's challenge to craft a carbon-free way of using renewable energy to change everyday life). How did you decide on a category and project?

Barbara: We just bounced around ideas until we liked one, then found which category it fit into. We found some inspiration from science magazines which we regularly read and we talked to some teachers, as well as our father and grandfather who both worked in the spaceflight industry. Our grandfather worked in communications for the Apollo missions, studying the effect the atmosphere had on radio waves. Our father wrote the software used on the Mars landers.

You designed a railgun. What is that, anyway?

Nate: A railgun is a device that can be used to launch projectiles. It consists of two metal rails. A charge is passed through the rails into a small metal piece in between them, called an armature. The magnetic force from the current shoots the armature forward. Basically, it is a launching platform.

Barbara: Our idea is to use a railgun instead of a rocket once the payload is in low Earth orbit (in space). Therefore, the railgun would not have to be powerful enough to cause a payload to exit the Earth's atmosphere. [Find out more on the project web site.]

You had to submit three documents for the competition: a technical report, a business plan, and a graphical representation. How long did you work on those?

Nate: We spent a few weeks coming up with our idea and doing some general research about railguns, including a call to a friend at MIT. He graduated from our high school in 2008 and was instrumental in helping us do some of the math proving our idea was practical and realistic. Once we had our idea and research, it took about three days to write our technical and business reports, and about a day for our graphical representation. The technical report is about eight pages long and the business report is three or four.

The 2009-10 Spirit of Innovation Award finalists have been announced. Check them out!

Were you involved in other science competitions before?

Nate: Yes, we both participate in FIRST robotics and I am captain of my school’s team. Also, this past summer I did research at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (a NSF lab) and my sister plans to do a similar project over the summer, seeing as she is too old for CTY now.

As finalists, you attended the Conrad Awards finals which included a summit of leading scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Tell us about these experiences.

Nate: At the summit, we only presented our ideas and were judged once at the beginning. The rest of the time, there were meetings and presentations with entrepreneurs and scientists. My favorite meeting was one where we sat down with someone from NASA, a leader in the private space industry, and Nancy Conrad, the chairperson of the Conrad Foundation. We talked about whether our idea would be something that NASA could practically use or if we could make a business out of it, and how we could go about making either of these things happen. It was actually very helpful having the ability to get feedback from industry experts. Additionally, we learned how to deal with negative feedback in positive ways.

Read about all the 2008-08 Spirit of Innovation Award finalists.

All finalist teams blogged about their projects before and after the summit. You can view our blog at http://archive08.conradawards.org/mast.

How did you divide work between your team? Did you work well together as siblings?

Nate: Our team had five members. Although my sister and I came up with the ideas, everyone contributed in some way. Some of us focused more on business and others worked more on the technical side of things.

As siblings, we get along very well. This is not the only extracurricular we do together. We are both on our school's robotics team, and we both work as techies on our school's plays.

Barbara: Working together proved to be very rewarding since we both very knowledgeable in different fields and found ways to make our ideas work together. Plus being with our friends was a challenge and a positive experience. We all got along very well and therefore tended to get sidetracked, but when it came down to it we all realized that we had to write and submit our entry if we wanted to compete. Our common goal and hope helped us stay focused.