Spare Parts: Introduction Summary & Analysis

On June 25, 2004, Cristian Arcega, Lorenzo Santillan, Oscar Vazquez, and Luis Aranda stand in a classroom at the University of California, Santa Barbara, presenting their project for the third annual Marine Advanced Technology Education Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) competition. The MATE competition is an event sponsored by NASA and the Navy to identify the country’s top engineering talent. Other teams in the competition come from colleges across the country, including MIT; these four students are from Carl Hayden Community High School in West Phoenix, Arizona.

One of the competitions judges, Tom Swean (who runs the Navy’s Ocean Engineering and Marine Systems program), questions the four students about their robot, asking how they made the laser work. Cristian, the team’s science wizard, answers the questions rapidly and impressively.

Another judge, Lisa Spence (the flight lead at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory), had majored in engineering at Arizona State University and knows the area where these kids lived. She’s surprised that such an impressive underwater-robotics team has emerged from the neighborhood, considering that it is relatively poor—and there are no oceans nearby.

While other teams had arrived with robots made with budgets of more than ten thousand dollars, these students have a plastic robot partially assembled from scrap parts, which they had dubbed Stinky because it smelled so bad when they glued it together. The students are first time competitors who had entered at the highest level, and their presence in the competition almost seems like a mistake. But Lorenzo, another team member, is proud of what they’ve built.

Swean asks a question about signal interference, which Oscar answers as the team’s de facto leader. Oscar is seventeen (two years older than Cristian and Lorenzo) and has been serving in Carl Hayden’s Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) throughout high school, eventually becoming the group’s executive officer. He dreams of being a soldier.

Though Oscar wants to enlist in the Army and has been living in America for six years, his parents snuck him into Arizona when he was twelve; therefore, he cannot not enlist as a person living in the country illegally. When he realized this during his senior year, he searched for another field in which to distinguish himself.

Cristian answers most of Swean and Spence’s questions, but Spence also notes that Lorenzo and Oscar are able to speak intelligently about their robot’s mechanical and electronic components. About half of their overall score will come from this technical evaluation, and it is important that all members can answer questions.

Spence then turns to Luis (who is seventeen, six feet tall, and 250 pounds), who hasn’t said anything yet. The other boys had recruited Luis because they needed someone strong enough to lift the robot in and out of the pool. Spence asks Luis specifically about how they employed PWM. Luis explains that PWM means pulse-width modulation, and it is a technique that allows them to control the robot digitally. Cristian is amazed that Luis answered the question right.

Spence is also impressed. As a NASA employee, she has become accustomed to working with engineers who conform to a certain type: white, well-educated, conservative clothes. She is amazed to see the four students in front of her, signaling that the future might look different.