The Contest winners announcement thread!

Wow! This really turned out far better than I had expected. I'm really glad that so many peopl participated, and all around I believe everyone had fun with it.

It was really a learning experinece for me too, in many ways. The entries all had their own unique flair and style to them, many presenting new information or plans that sound very excellent! Aside from that, I now have some ideas for a next contest as well as as different ways to do things.

Thanks for all who participated, whether it was from just reading the posts to entering a submission to doing the judging. You're all awesome.

Anyway, enough from me... Here's what you really wanted to see:

1st Place (10,000 ATS Points)
Mission to planet Mars: HALYCON by watch_the_rocks with 115 points.

Judges' comments

amazingly well written and extremely well thought out... i loved all aspects of it, especially (i felt) the story-like narrative form of the entry... it truly felt like a story of things to come...

I loved the Multi-nation approach, not only do I like the money saving aspects and bringing many different minds to the table, but also the message such a mission would send to the world.

The pictures of Avalon were also a great touch really helped me get a better understanding of the design.

2nd Place (5,000 ATS Points)
Mission: Deep Red by Yarium with 102 points.

Judges' comments

Very well articulated and even though its expensive, i would say this was very well put together.

That person obviously put a lot of thought into it.

3rd Place (2,500 ATS Points)
Project Ares by jra with 97 points.

Judges' comments

i loved all the various parts of it

I really like the use of a Nuclear reactor for energy production on this mission. The nuclear rocket engine/ magnetosphere plasma propulsion system hybrid also sounds interesting. In theory M2P2 could produce some amazing speeds compared to conventional rockets.

I also really like the concepts for Psychology, health and hygiene dedicated entertainment computers for movies games and books sounds like a great concept for a long mission

The other entries
Mars exo 2000 by bodrul garnered 78 points.

Judges' comments

Some good ideas, although extremely expensive

Mars adventure by infoseeker accumulated 36 points.

Judges' comments

Not enuff info

I though the premise of this was to send humans to Mars, not robots

[edit on 6/6/2006 by cmdrkeenkid]

oh i lost



.

Thanks anonymous Judges! Who knows... maybe Project: Deep Red will become a reality someday if we're lucky in the near future

Congrats to watch_the_rocks and Yarium . Both very good and well thought out entries. This was a fun little contest, hopefully there will be another like it again some time.

hey, nice. I read somewhere that someone thought I had a lots of spare time on my hands. Yeah, I did. There's been NO surf for the past month, so I had an extra few hours each night, which I suppose isnt all that bad. Might go for RATS now . . .

Ta judges, btw. It was a bit long through, wasn't it? I can't write short stories for nuts.


edit: cmdrkeenkid, I think that you would have had a LOT more entries if you had increased the points award to something around ats50, 000. 10 big ones just doesn't cut it for a lot of the people around here.

[edit on 7/6/2006 by watch_the_rocks]