High School Team's Lunar Life-Support Plan Stalled By Teammate Who Still Hasn't Done His Part

NAPERVILLE, IL—Less than a day after NASA announced the opening of its $1 million Moon Base Student Challenge, a four-person team at Grover Quill Memorial High School confirmed Monday that its plan for human life on the lunar surface had been held up by a teammate who has not done his part.

"We split it up the first night. I took power generation and storage, Priya took communications networks, Marcus took surface mobility, and Tyler said he would 'handle life support,'" said junior Hannah Okafor, 16. She added that, as of Monday afternoon, Tyler's entire contribution to the life-support systems category was a title slide in Papyrus.

Team members said they had read NASA's announcement 43 times, citing what Okafor called "its incredible momentum." They had read the official rules a combined zero times.

According to teammates, Tyler noticed that the challenge's deliverables include trade studies, concept proposals and stakeholder briefings. He then volunteered to serve as "the stakeholder," a role he said would require him to be briefed rather than do anything.

In the agency's release, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told students, "You do not have to wait until graduation to contribute." Teammates said Tyler had taken this to mean he could wait until Jan. 24, one day before registration closes.

"This is entirely consistent with the literature," said Dr. Rosalind Ferrante of the Institute for Collaborative Avoidance. Her study of 1,200 school group projects found that 97 percent contained one member whose sole deliverable was asking "what are we doing again." Ferrante conceded the study itself was "mostly tables." She urged reporters to rely instead on her institute's press release, which rounded the figure up to "every single one, forever."

At press time, Tyler had uploaded a second slide reading "Life Support: TBD (Air?)," which his teammates reluctantly agreed counted as a concept proposal.