Adelaide Uni student taking on the world in a space race to Mars

ADELAIDE University student Tom Cullum is taking on the world in a bid to fly astronauts to Mars.

Adelaide University Mechatronic Engineering student Tom Cullum has worked solo on his plan to send astronauts to Mars. Picture: Keryn Stevens

SPACE fanatic Tom Cullum is taking on the world in a bid to fly astronauts to Mars.

The 22-year-old University of Adelaide student will travel to Washington DC in September to present his ideas for a two man flight to Mars to a panel of judges including NASA scientists and aerospace industry experts.

The fourth-year mechatronic engineering student will compete with teams from across the globe as one of 10 finalists in the International Gemini Mars Design Competition held by the Mars Society.

Remarkably, while all other nine teams have several members and used the resources of some of the world’s elite universities to create their plans, Tom is a one-man band who entered the competition as “something to do” in the long summer break.

“Ideally I’d like to get into the space industry as part of my career so I figured this would be worth having a crack at,” the former Pembroke School graduate said.

“I’ve been fascinated by space travel since a boy and now it’s taken me on an interesting adventure.”

Formed in 1998 by world renowned author and space engineer, Dr Robert Zubrin, the Mars Society is the world’s largest and most influential space advocacy organisation dedicated to the human exploration and settlement of the Red planet.

The Society’s latest competition was initiated on the back of a failed start-up company called “Inspiration Mars” that didn’t generate sufficient funding.

The new contest invited US and international engineering students to create a plan for a two-person Mars fly-by mission that could be placed on the desk of the President-elect in November 2016 and completed by the end of his or her second term in office.

Tom’s design uses many of the modules of the International Space Station as its base building blocks.

“The emphasis was on the project being as cheap and simple as possible so my design uses as much existing pre-tested flight technology as possible,” he added.

“I plan to use the Space X Dragon capsule, Russian booster rockets to leave earth and then Space X’s Falcon rockets — the only bit that is yet to fly — to launch everything in to space.

“I didn’t have a lot of resources or time to model things but I seem to have impressed the judges anyway.

“I’m really curious to get over there and see what the other competitors have come up with.”

The nine other competition finalists, represent over 20 universities from seven countries, including Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, United States and United Kingdom.

Tom — who caught up with Mars at the Adelaide Planetarium at Mawson Lakes — is keen on another close up encounter on Sunday when our planetary neighbour will be at its closest point to the Earth since 2005.