HOUSTON—Not all learning is rocket science.

Four Sibley-Ocheyedan High School students however would have been disappointed if their trip to the Johnson Space Center in Houston lacked the aerospace activities promised.

Sibley-Ocheyedan senior Elliot Daiker and juniors Yasmin Espinoza, Dawson Kreykes and Daniel Rosas traveled to Texas to attend the Space Settlement Design Competition offered through the Northwest Area Education Agency Feb. 5-10.

To qualify for the experience, the Sibley-Ocheyedan students needed to take a structural engineering class taught by high school math instructor Kerry Krogman. Seniors are given priority, but underclassmen can submit an essay for consideration if space is still available.

Most students attending plan to major in an engineering field such as physical, chemical, mechanical, biochemistry or civil.

“I just thought it would be a really cool opportunity to be able to go down there,” Daiker said. “I am going to go to Iowa State University for aerospace engineering, so this will hopefully make me able to connect more with the engineering community and maybe find a good job for after college. It kind of solidified my appetite, per se, for engineering.”

Kreykes is undecided between electrical and mechanical engineering.

Espinoza’s first choice for her field of study is pharmacy, but she’s also considering food production in space after attending the event.

Rosas chose to attend because he saw the benefits of the experience as a chance to learn leadership and communication skills while team building with a variety of people to accomplish a task.

His initial career plan leaned toward law enforcement, but after this experience on the operations team, he is now looking at a trade profession such as plumbing or welding.

Once on-site Friday, Feb. 7, the 200 students primarily from northwest Iowa and Texas split into four different companies. Each participant received an assignment to a structural engineering, operations engineering, automation or robotics group.

“We had all of Saturday to prepare and do all of our research and figure out what all we wanted and create a presentation,” Espinoza said.

Daiker shared a summary of the project each company needed to complete.

“We had to create a settlement on Mars,” Daiker said. “It was mostly a transport/cargo settlement.”

Compiling a 35-minute, 50-slide presentation to share with leaders in the aerospace field that Sunday was the culmination of students’ day of cooperative learning.

“We all played a very major role for our teams,” Espinoza said. “Unfortunately, I was the only one to present — and that was terrifying—but it was a wonderful experience.”

Select members of the top team will earn a trip to the international competition June 19-22 at the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando, FL. Kreykes’s company took first place honors. Normally the students filling the higher leadership roles have the best chance of attending.

Krogman warns groups before leaving that it is impossible to get everything done to help take off some of the pressure.

The Sibley-Ocheyedan group also spent time in Galveston, TX, before arriving at the Johnson Space Center. The students toured different areas of the Houston center featuring the Saturn V rocket, mission control, the training facility and where employees build and design all the parts that go up into the space center.

Each student shared a tidbit of knowledge they learned from the trip:

  • Daiker: “The importance of prototyping and rethinking of ideas, and how important it is to actually get stuff wrong.”
  • Espinoza: “How much hard work and effort you have to put in to achieve the goals you’d like.”
  • Kreykes: “I learned how important communication is in order to do projects fast and on time.”
  • Rosas: “It helped me learn how I could deal with stress better.”