Space Exploration & Rocketry

During this unit, we will be learning as much as we can about flight & space exploration, from the Wright Bothers to Robert Goddard's rockets to the launching of Sputnik to the Apollo landing and beyond. Students will watch the HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" during the course of the school year.

This project has 2 parts:

create the highest-flying rocket you can from a 2-liter pop bottle
Create a 2-page "Space Hall of Fame" flyer for a class display, print & laminate it.

Topics:

ROCKETRY ACTIVITY:

Discuss principles of rocketry
Design & build a rocket from a 2-liter plastic pop bottle and various scrap materials.
100 points

Water Rocket Links:

Water Rocket Lab
WaterRocket Fun
WaterRocket Annex
Water Rocket Garage

Space Hall of Fame Assignment

Create a 2-page "flyer" about an important person, program, or event that deals with Space Exploration.
Describe in brief (large text) your topic on one page. The other page should be largely graphics/picture(s).
Each page should have a title. I will assign your topic. Each class will have different topics, as we will try to cover as many space exploration topics as possible.
Grading (50 pts.)


Students use 2-Liter pop bottles and reach heights of 300 feet using nothing but water and compressed air! More challenging than model rockets, students learn about center of gravity, center of pressure, and Newton's laws of motion.

Find out what you would weigh on the other planets!Click Here!

Space Links:
Yahoo space links
Space History
Starport
Space.com
Terror in Space
Space Records
List of Astronauts
Astronaut Connection
Encyclopedia Astronautica To Fly is Everything
Rocket History
Space Primer
Human Spaceflight Evaluation:
Flight #1 (40 pts.)
Flight #2 (40 pts.)
Effort/Teamwork (20 pts.)
200 ft.-40 pts.
180 ft.-38 pts.
160 ft.-36 pts.
140 ft.-34 pts.
120 ft.-32 pts.
100 ft.-30 pts.
80 ft.-28 pts.
60 ft. -26 pts.
40 ft. -24 pts.
20 ft. -22 pts.
On launchpad-20 pts.

The Mercury Seven: Gus Grissom, Alan Shepard, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, John Glenn, Gordon Cooper. They led the way!
A graphic showing the relative sizes of the Mercury, Gemini, & Apollo ships.