Imagining life off the Earth

Lesson plan

3 class periods of about 45 minutes.

1. Day 1 · 45 min

   Kepler's Moon

   1. 5 minutes: Students write three things a person would need to survive a trip to the Moon. Keep the lists for day 3.
   2. Open The Dream: a journey to the Moon and read the History tab. Kepler wrote it around 1609; no one had seen the Moon's far side, and he filled the gaps with geometry, guesses and jokes.
   3. Read 14 to 17 aloud: the daemon's journey to Levania. Students list the dangers and what is done about each: narcotics for the first heave, damp sponges for breathing.
   4. Read 35, 39, 56 and 57: nights and days on each hemisphere, and the size of Volva in the sky.
   5. Start the source's activity: a two-column chart, Could be seen or measured in 1609 and Guess or joke, with ten sentences from the daemon's account sorted into it.

2. Day 2 · 45 min

   The Brick Moon

   1. Open Signals from the Brick Moon and read the History tab. Hale wrote this story for The Atlantic Monthly in 1869, as if it were a memoir.
   2. Read 1 to 8 aloud. Students answer the comprehension question: how the settlers send messages to the earth, and how Haliburton answers them (8).
   3. Read 12 to 19. In pairs, students trace how Ingham reasons through crowding (2), food (18 and 19), water (17 and 19) and air (3, 15 and 17), and mark what he leaves unexplained.
   4. Discuss the reliability question: what makes the story read like a true report, and what shows it is fiction.
   5. Pairs list what Hale imagines for air, food and water, and keep the list for day 3.

3. Day 3 · 45 min

   Greenhouses in orbit

   1. Open Greenhouses in Orbit and read 21.2, 21.4 and 31.2 to 31.4 aloud. Students trace what the people give the plants and what the plants give back.
   2. Read 32.4 and 32.12. Students sketch the greenhouse tube and label it with Tsiolkovsky's own figures: 500 meters long, 2 meters across.
   3. Discuss the connection question on Signals from the Brick Moon: how much each writer explains about how plants could live in space.
   4. Return to the lists from day 1 and add what each writer imagined for air, food and water.
   5. 15 minutes: Students answer the big question with evidence from at least two sources: how people pictured traveling and living in space before anyone went, and how openly each writer admits what he does not know.

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

To finish

Come back to the question: How did people picture traveling and living in space before anyone went? 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, Hale and Tsiolkovsky could measure from what they guessed, diagram their figures, and ask why Kepler framed his ideas as a dream.

Go further

Other units

Why go to space?

Encyclopedia

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky · Life support in spacecraft · Space stations · Space suits

Play

Space Hotel Ltd

Collection

Every source in Reaching Space