The year is 2040. You are a member of a space crew that was to rendezvous with the mother ship on the lighted surface of the moon. You experienced mechanical difficulties and your ship was forced to land about 200 miles from the point you were to be. During re-entry and landing, much of the equipment on your ship was damaged. Your survival depends on you reaching the mother ship. You will need to survey what is left that is useable and determine the most critical undamaged items that you will take for the 200 mile trip.
Your task is to look over the list below which contains the useable, undamaged items left on your ship, and rank them in order of their importance for your crew. Remember you need to rank each item in terms of its value in allowing you to reach the mother ship. Copy the list below or print out a copy. Place the number 1 by the most important item and keep going to number 15 which will be the least important. Be ready to explain why you have given each item the rank it received. Use your knowledge of the Moon and its environment to help you make your decisions. When you are done you can check how you did against the rankings given this same list by NASA. If you are doing this activity in your classroom, compare your rankings with other groups or individuals and hear their reasons for their rankings before checking the NASA list.
How close did you come? Were your top 5 most important and bottom 5 least important items (regardless of ranking numbers) the same ones as others in your class? Or the same as on the NASA list? (See link below.)
| ___ Box of matches ___ Food concentrate ___ 50 feet of nylon rope ___ Parachute silk ___ Portable heating unit ___ Two .45 calibre pistols ___ One case dehydrated milk ___ Two 100-pound tanks of oxygen ___ Stellar map (of moon's surface) ___ Life raft ___ Magnetic compass ___ 5 gallons of water ___ Signal flares
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| ___ First aid kit containing injection needle ___ Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter | |