And the winners are...

Wow. Truly, this was a tough challenge, but we were thrilled to have nearly 400 amazing entries. The GrabCAD community is full of very capable modelers, and many entries showed a good grasp of the design requirements.  It is a truly an exciting time and we are on the cusp of a space revolution. New technologies and missions we haven’t even imagined are on the horizon, and ULA is transforming the future of launch.

Thank you for the time and effort put into the challenge – as evidenced by the great questions and conversation during the entry period. The key idea in the challenge was in the interpretation of the design space that we provided, and even though many of the entries showed good notional and conceptual promise, some didn’t fully meet the dimensional requirements set forth in the challenge.  We selected our finalists from the top pool of candidate parts as well as from those we felt deserved a closer, more detailed look based on the other qualitative merits put forth in the challenge. There were a number of parts not selected that were excellent entries, and we reviewed every submission. To select the winners, we completed a detailed analysis with our methods and tools.  The most common discriminators that became apparent during the challenge were edge distance, part stress, and support material. 

Overall, we were very impressed with the quality of work displayed, and honored to be able to judge the submissions.

Congratulations to Nic Adams as our first place winner! His support bracket will fly on a future Atlas V rocket. Since ULA received so many outstanding submissions, the first place award has been increased to $10,000.

ULA is committed to reaching the next generation of scientist and engineers, and opportunities such as this challenge are a great way to build the enthusiasm in the innovative work taking place in aerospace. This is an incredible time to be a part of the space industry. Thank you for all of your work as ULA transforms the industry making space more affordable, accessible and commercialized.

ULA and Stratasys judging team