Imagining space travel

Lesson plan

4 class periods of about 45 minutes.

1. Day 1 · 45 min

   Kepler's dream

   1. 5 minutes: From the History tab of The Dream: a journey to the Moon, students note that Johannes Kepler wrote it in Prague around 1609, that he held the earth moves around the Sun, and that no one had seen the Moon's far side.
   2. 15 minutes: Read passages 14 to 17 together: the daemon's account of the journey to Levania. Students list who can make the trip and what is done to keep them alive on the way.
   3. 15 minutes: Read passages 20, 21, 38 and 39. Students sort sentences into two columns, “Could be seen or measured in 1609” and “Guess or joke.”
   4. 10 minutes: Discuss why Kepler wrapped his astronomy in a dream, a book and a spirit. Point students to the History tab, which says his notes call the daemon the science of astronomy.

2. Day 2 · 45 min

   Life on a small world

   1. 15 minutes: Read passages 2, 3, 4, 12 and 19 of Signals from the Brick Moon by Edward Everett Hale. Students note how the settlers send messages to the earth, and how Ingham reasons about crowding, food and air.
   2. 15 minutes: Read passages 21.4, 31.2, 31.3 and 32.4 of Greenhouses in Orbit by Tsiolkovsky. Students explain why the travelers build a greenhouse and why Laplace wants it kept apart from the rocket.
   3. 10 minutes: Pairs draw arrows between a rocket and a greenhouse to show what the people give the plants and what the plants give back, quoting passages 21.4, 31.2 and 31.6.
   4. 5 minutes: Students mark one claim in each story that no one could check when it was written. Hale's narrator admits he “could not then conjecture” what air the settlers had; Tsiolkovsky worked from calculation, since no one had yet left the atmosphere.

3. Day 3 · 45 min

   From story to law

   1. 10 minutes: From the History tab of Signing the National Aeronautics and Space Act, students note the steps from Sputnik in October 1957 to Dwight D. Eisenhower signing the law on July 29, 1958. Read all five paragraphs together. The encyclopedia article The NACA and NASA gives more background.
   2. 10 minutes: Students rewrite each paragraph as one plain sentence and decide whether it speaks mainly to Congress, to other countries or to the public.
   3. 15 minutes: Read passages 15, 16, 31 and 32 of We choose to go to the Moon by John F. Kennedy. Students mark each with E where he argues for exploring for its own sake, R where he argues for leading or winning, or both.
   4. 10 minutes: Discuss the History tab: Ted Sorensen drafted the speech from drafts by NASA and other agencies, and the line about choosing the moon because it is hard began in NASA's draft. Students say what this changes about using the speech as evidence of Kennedy's own reasons.

4. Day 4 · 45 min

   Impact, influence, change

   1. 10 minutes: Put the five sources on a timeline: Kepler (written about 1609, printed 1634), Hale (1869), Tsiolkovsky (1917), Eisenhower (1958) and Kennedy (1962). For each, students note one thing the writer could know and one thing no one had yet done.
   2. 15 minutes: Groups take one word each. Influence: compare who carries out space travel in Tsiolkovsky's novel (four scientists and sixteen craftsmen) and under the 1958 Act (a government agency built on the NACA). Change: compare how Kepler's daemon (passage 14) and Kennedy (passage 32) describe the danger of the journey. Impact: what Eisenhower says the NACA did after 1915 and what he expects of the new Act (paragraph 5).
   3. 10 minutes: Groups report, each with one quotation.
   4. 10 minutes: Each student writes a paragraph answering the unit question, using at least one story and one government source. The encyclopedia articles on Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, life support, space stations and space suits are there for students who want to go further.

Read these sources

In this order. Each opens in Hearth Library with the original beside plain English, and a History tab on who made it and how far to trust it.

1. 1

   The Dream: a journey to the Moon

   Johannes Kepler, 1609–1630. Moderate.

   A story inside a story, with astronomy passages that need slow reading; the footnotes explain the period ideas.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   daemon

   a spirit; in Kepler’s story, a spirit who knows the way to the Moon

   eclipse

   a time when the shadow of the earth or the Moon blocks the Sun’s light

   hemisphere

   one half of a round world

   ether

   the high, thin space far above the air, where people believed the Moon and stars moved

   German mile

   an old measure of distance, several of our miles long

   zodiac

   the band of star patterns, called signs, that the Sun, Moon, and planets seem to move through

   1. Comprehension According to the daemon, what kinds of people can make the journey to Levania, and what is done to keep them alive on the way?
   2. Analysis Kepler tells his ideas about the Moon through a dream, a book in the dream, and a spirit called up by Duracotus’s mother. Why might he have wrapped his astronomy in so many layers of story?
   3. Analysis (reliability) No one in Kepler’s time had been to the Moon or seen its far side. Which parts of his Levania could he base on measurement and on what could be seen from the earth, and which are guesses or jokes? How can you tell them apart?
   4. Connection Read Signals from the Brick Moon. Kepler’s Privolvans face nights of frost and violent winds and days of fierce heat. Hale’s settlers report that their rainfall is “regular as the clock.” His narrator, Ingham, describes a tropical climate but says he could not then work out what air they had. Compare how each writer explains what living on a small world would be like, and how openly each one admits what he does not know.

   Activity Students make a two-column chart headed “Could be seen or measured in 1609” and “Guess or joke,” and sort ten sentences from the daemon’s account into it. Then each student draws the sky as a Subvolvan would see it, using Kepler’s own figures for the size of Volva, and labels the drawing with the sentence it comes from.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

2. 2

   Signals from the Brick Moon

   Edward Everett Hale, 1869. Moderate.

   Long nineteenth-century sentences and a few old words, such as despatch and ablution.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   ablution

   washing oneself

   ether

   the thin, invisible substance that most scientists of the time believed filled all of space and carried light

   eclipse

   a time when a shadow blocks the Sun’s light; here, when the Brick Moon passes through the earth’s shadow

   Morse code

   the telegraph code that spells out letters with dots and dashes, or short and long signals

   despatch

   an old spelling of dispatch, a message sent quickly, often by telegraph

   refractor

   a telescope that uses a glass lens to gather light

   cambric

   a fine, thin cloth

   firmament

   the sky, as the Bible names it

   1. Comprehension How do the people on the Brick Moon send messages to the earth, and how does Haliburton answer them?
   2. Analysis Ingham thinks about crowding, food, water, and air on the Brick Moon. How does he reason his way through each problem, and which ones does he leave unexplained?
   3. Analysis (reliability) The story is told as Ingham’s memoir, with exact times, numbered messages, and a record book. It was written by a Boston minister for The Atlantic Monthly in 1869. What in the text makes it read like a true report, and what clues show that Hale is writing fiction for readers to enjoy?
   4. Connection Read Greenhouses in Orbit. Hale’s settlers report, “We began with lichens and have come as far as palms and hemlocks.” Tsiolkovsky’s travelers feed their plants with their own waste and build a glass tube 500 meters long to grow fruit. Compare how much each writer explains about how plants could live in space, and what each one chooses to describe in detail.

   Activity Pairs write a short message of their own in Morse code, using a code chart, and then signal it to the class the way the settlers do, with long jumps for dashes and short hops for dots. The class writes down and decodes the message. Afterward, students reread the paragraph on why Orcutt signaled from the edge and at the start and end of the eclipse, and explain his choice in their own words.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

3. 3

   Greenhouses in Orbit

   Tsiolkovsky, 1917. Moderate.

   Easy dialogue, but many numbers and some technical passages on pressure and gases.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   ether

   an invisible, weightless substance that nineteenth-century physicists believed filled all space and carried light; here it means outer space

   ultraviolet

   light that the eye cannot see, which Tsiolkovsky also calls “chemical rays”

   ozone

   a form of oxygen; around 1900 many people believed it made air fresh and healthy

   carbon dioxide

   the gas people breathe out and plants take in

   pollinate

   to carry pollen from flower to flower so that the plant can make fruit

   verst

   an old Russian measure of distance, about 1.07 kilometers (two-thirds of a mile)

   1. Comprehension Why do the travelers decide to build a greenhouse outside the rocket, and why does Laplace want it kept apart from the rocket?
   2. Analysis Trace what the people give to the plants and what the plants give back. How does Tsiolkovsky make the rocket and the greenhouse depend on each other, and what does he say must still be watched and controlled?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Tsiolkovsky had worked out the mathematics of rocket flight, but in 1917 no one had yet left the atmosphere. Which of his claims rest on calculation or on what was known on the earth, and which could no one check at the time? How should a reader treat his exact figures?
   4. Connection Read Signing the National Aeronautics and Space Act. In Tsiolkovsky’s novel, four scientists from a group who have left the world for a castle in the Himalayas travel into space themselves, with sixteen craftsmen. In 1958 Eisenhower signed a law that gave civilian space activities to a new government agency, built on the NACA. Compare who each source expects will carry out space travel and exploration, and for what purposes.

   Activity Students draw a labeled diagram of the rocket and the greenhouse from chapters 31 and 32, with arrows for what the two pipes carry, the chambers people pass through, and the figures Tsiolkovsky gives (500 meters long, 2 meters across, 20 tons). Each label quotes the sentence it comes from. Pairs then trade diagrams and check each label against the text.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

4. 4

   Signing the National Aeronautics and Space Act

   Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1958. Moderate.

   Very short, but written in formal legal language; the footnotes explain the terms.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   signing statement

   a formal comment a president issues when he signs a bill into law

   enactment

   the making of a bill into law

   aeronautics

   the science and practice of flight through the air

   treaty

   a formal agreement between countries; in the United States, the Senate must approve it

   advice and consent

   the Constitution’s words for the Senate’s approval of treaties

   construe

   to explain or understand the meaning of words, especially in a law

   1. Comprehension Which part of the Act does Eisenhower say “requires comment,” and how does he say he reads it?
   2. Analysis Eisenhower calls adding space exploration to the NACA’s work “a natural evolution,” and reminds readers that the NACA was founded in 1915. Why might he present NASA as growing out of an older agency, and whom do you think he hoped to persuade?
   3. Analysis (reliability) This statement is the President’s own reading of the law, and the words of the Act did not change. How far can it tell us what the Act says, and how far only what Eisenhower wanted it to mean? What other document would you read to check?
   4. Connection Read We choose to go to the Moon. Eisenhower writes of “leadership in the space age” in a short written statement. Kennedy, four years later, spoke to about 40,000 people at Rice Stadium in Houston. Compare the reasons each president gives for a national space effort, and how the form of each source shapes what it says.

   Activity Students rewrite each of the five paragraphs as one plain sentence. In small groups, they decide which paragraph speaks mainly to Congress, which to other countries, and which to the public, and give a phrase from the text as evidence. Groups then compare their answers and discuss why the longest paragraph is about a single clause.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

5. 5

   We choose to go to the Moon

   John F. Kennedy, 1962. Moderate.

   Long spoken sentences full of lists, but mostly common words.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   honorary

   given as an honor, without the usual duties

   manpower

   the number of people available for a kind of work

   vistas

   wide views; here, new possibilities opening up

   strife

   angry or violent conflict

   conquest

   taking control of something by effort or force

   incumbency

   the time a person holds an office

   hazardous

   full of danger

   1. Comprehension What reasons does Kennedy give for choosing to go to the moon “in this decade”?
   2. Analysis Kennedy compares going to the moon with climbing the highest mountain, flying the Atlantic, and Rice playing Texas. What does each comparison ask his listeners to feel about the moon goal?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Kennedy’s speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, drafted this speech, drawing on drafts from NASA and other agencies, and the line about choosing the moon because it is hard began in NASA’s draft. How does this change the way we use the speech as evidence of Kennedy’s own reasons?
   4. Connection Read The Dream: a journey to the Moon. Kepler’s daemon says the journey puts human lives “in the greatest danger” and chooses only certain kinds of people for it. Kennedy calls the moon voyage “the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.” Compare how each source describes the danger of the journey, and what each one suggests about who should make it.

   Activity Students mark each kept paragraph with an E where Kennedy argues for exploring for its own sake, an R where he argues for leading or winning, both letters where he does both, and a dash where he does neither. Most of his case for leading was cut from this passage, so expect few R’s; students say what the kept paragraphs stress instead. In groups, they decide which reasons were aimed at the crowd of students in Rice Stadium and which at the nation listening beyond it, and present one quotation for each.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

To finish

Come back to the question: How did ideas about space travel move from stories to a national program? Ask students to answer it with evidence from at least two of the sources, and to say which source they trust most and why.

Standards

Students sort what Kepler could measure from what he guessed, diagram Tsiolkovsky's greenhouse from his figures, match Eisenhower's paragraphs to their audiences, and mark where Kennedy argues for exploring and where for leading.

Go further

Other units

From inoculation to vaccine · Counting and mapping disease · New ways to travel, eat and shop · Fixing the calendar

Encyclopedia

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky · Life support in spacecraft · Space stations · Space suits · The NACA and NASA

Collection

Every source in Innovation in History