Moon Replacement Mission

My goal this semester was to do more open-ended “thought experiment” problem solving projects that develop student ideation skills rather than just offering plug and chug calculations as enrichment. I spent 4 days developing this latest project alongside Chris Duel and the kids ate it up! My ears were in teacher heaven listening to all the interesting assumptions they were taking on to solve the challenge (and do the math) of designing a flight plan for a “Moon Replacement Mission”. Yeah… replacing the moon… it’s a thing now…

The shared google doc is located here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uklcqBElxbJhlA-t3rwCCe08cYJlfX5_KofnGN1sPxc/edit?usp=sharing

Below are some examples of the students first day of working through the problem and how they are attempting to gather information.  Once pair of young ladies went so far as to using the slope of the line to determine how technology and speed has probably changed since the manned Apollo missions!