Survival on the Moon
Scenario
You are in a space crew originally scheduled to meet with a mother ship on the lighted surface of the moon. Mechanical difficulties however, have forced your ship to crash land at a spot 500kms from the meeting point. The rough landing has damaged most of your equipment on board. Since your survival depends on reaching the mother ship the most crucial items available must be chosen for the 500km journey.
Listed below are the 15 items left intact after the crash landing.
Items
- Box of matches
- Food concentrate
- 50 feet of nylon rope
- Parachute silk
- Portable heating unit
- Two .45 calibre pistols
- One case of dehydrated milk
- Two 50kg tanks of oxygen
- Map of the moon
- Life raft
- Magnetic compass
- 40 litres of water
- Signal flares
- First aid kit containing injection needles
- Solar-powered radio transmitter
Your task is to rank them in order of their importance to your crew in its attempt to reach the mother ship. Place number 1 by the most important item, 2 by the second important and so on until you reach the least important at number 15.
Instructions
- On your own rank the items on the list and write it in the ‘Individual’ column.
- As a group discuss your individual rankings and try to reach an agreement on how to rank the items on the list and write the group ranking down in the ‘Group’ column.
- Fill in the official NASA rankings and record the scores for individual and group.
- Who did better, individual or group? Why do you think this happened?
| Individual
|
Group
|
NASA
|
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
|
Official NASA Rankings
Most important (1) – least important (15)
- Two 50 kg tanks of oxygen – fills respiration requirement
- 40 litres of water – essential for hydration
- Map of the moon – principal means of finding mother ship
- Food concentrate – supplies daily food requirement
- Solar-powered radio transmitter – possible communication with mother ship
- 50 feet of nylon rope – useful for help in climbing and transporting injured
- First aid kit containing injection needles – oral pills or injection medicine valuable
- Parachute silk – shelter against the sun’s rays
- Life raft – helpful for getting across chasms or down mountains
- Signal flares – distress call if in line of sight of mother ship
- Two .45 calibre pistols – self-propulsion devices could be made from them
- One case of dehydrated milk – can be used as food if mixed with water
- Portable heating unit – useful only if landing was on the dark side of the moon
- Magnetic compass – probably no magnetic poles so useless
- Box of matches – little or no use on the moon – no oxygen
Published on: 18 Jan 2011
