On Saturday 11th, Aldenham School arrived at Imperial College to begin the UK Space Design Conference briefing where we joined forces with five other schools to create a team of fifty students. Ewan Brocklesby, Yao Feng (13M) and William Wang (11M) were the astronauts representing McGill’s at this prestigious National Final. With four teams in total, we faced stiff competition from over 250 students from across the Country. The competition began, with the selection of leaders and division of members into departments based on their skill strengths such as structure, automation, marketing, humans and processes. The aim was to deliver a presentation demonstrating how we were going to design, build, manage and run a settlement orbiting the Sun. It was a gruelling 24 hours that required a tremendous amount of communication and teamwork among all departments to create a highly detailed portfolio of knowledge. The presentations kicked off on Sunday morning, and after an intense two days, our hard work paid off as Aldenham / OlympusMons emerged victorious. Our voyage now takes us to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where we will be competing at the World Final frontier! — Ewan Brocklesby (13M)