Competition History

The Asian Regional Space Settlement Design Competition was introduced in December, 2004 at the American Center, New Delhi, India.

It all started with the first team from India to qualify for the International Space Settlement Design Competition in July 2004. The competition was a high-intensity challenge, which fascinated all the students. Most of all, this competition changed the very learning process that we had followed from our childhood. Now, instead of having a teacher lecture the students, there were students all around the teachers doing their part of the research (on space settlements and terra-forming) and sharing it with the teacher and introducing innovative changes to the research. The competition opened up new horizons to explore.

What we also noticed was that, there were only 1 team from India, that had ever qualified; and that year it ours was the only foreign team, the rest of the 7 out of 8 teams being from USA. So, it was proposed to the International Organisers, Anita Gale and Richard Edwards, that we could organise Asian Semifinals for them in India, and this would ensure that we have at least one team from Asia every year in the Finals. This way we hoped to increase the participation of Indian teams in the competition thus sharing the wonderful experience that we got in the USA.

Anita and Richard showed great faith in us and we were given a chance to organise the semi-finals. With less than 5 months of preparation, we hosted the first Asian Semi-finals in December, 2004 at the American Center, New Delhi with a participation of more than 50 schools from all over Asia and support of companies like Boeing, Samtel and government agencies like Indian Air Force, Dept. of Science & Technology and CSIR.

Since, then we have organized four Asian Semifinals, with the seventh one already running this year; and have had two to three teams representing Asia every year at the International Finals in July of the years 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. The team from Lakshmipat Singhania Academy, Kolkata was part of the winning company at the International Finals 2013.