Self-Sufficient Living Spaces:
Astrospheres, Aquaspheres & Terraspheres!
A Mendocino Middle School Science/Engineering Project
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....Click ABOVE LEFT for a larger illustration of one of our student-created habitats with the Team of students who created it, this one an Astrosphere which is in the shape of Mickey Mouse! (90K) Click ABOVE RIGHT to view a Clarisworks Paint version of the design created by Zoe Colby and Lena Stavely.(44K)
Developed with the assistance of his class, by
Cory M. Wisnia, A MendoWorld Science Tech Guy
cwisnia@mcn.org
Mendocino Middle School
This is a site under severe construction and a work in-progress!
See Below
This site is being developed to show the results of a new engineering project which seeks to challenge Middle School students to design and build self-sufficient habitats for one of three situations: land, the oceans or in space. Students decide the types of spaces/rooms that are needed, and criteria are developed for the rooms. A list of room types and their total volume in cubic feet is developed. The students build their spaces with a mind toward a budget based upon SURFACE AREA in square feet, at $10,000 per square feet. The product of their design team is judge on total cost, unique design and utility! Below are pictures taken witha quicktake camera. For each one there is a larger image of about (130K) for close-up work. This is a work in progress. Students at present are writing up brief descriptions of their Habitats, explaining anything special or unusual about their project design, as well as how they went about sharing in the building. If you would like more information or would like to communicate to our students about how you feel about their designs, write to: cwisnia@mcn.org.
The idea of doing project pages like this came in part out of the idea that Al Rogers had for a California Web Project, first announced at the Fall 95 CUE conference in Santa Clara. It was the concept that student work can be put on the web to share with other students and teachers globally, with an idea of welcoming feedback and collaboration. This page is a beginning place for such a kind of project! Thanks Al, for the suggestion!
Last Update 5/16/96
Below are images which are thumbnails of several of the individual projects and their teams. Students learned that CYLINDERS have less surface for and same volume as RECTANGULAR PRISMS, so several teams tried where feasible to create rooms which were cylinders. Click on the small images for closeups in the range of 130K each). We will soon be putting on explanations about the Habitats, plus a budget breakdown which show total VOLUME, SURFACE AREA, and COST.
Stay tuned or visit in a few weeks!
NOTE: the larger images range up to 190K!
Subject: NASA WOW!
Debrief by Cory Wisnia, teacher, Mendocino Middle School: Yesterday, as an ending activity for this porject, we were scheduled to link up with NASA Houston from Mendocino in a special video-conference, which was a walk-through the Mockup and Trainer Center at Johnson Space Center. Everything went wrong and we never could connect, which was extremely frustrating, since you come back to the school and all the naysayers have a field day. Kids sitting there for forty minutes waiting for something that never realized. Classes at the Middle School waiting to see it live on local teevee. A mess. Jim Gibson at our video center and I felt awful about it, but he was able to connect later and we vowed to try again today.
Today! We tried again. With baited breath. Let me set the scene: I took 6 8th grade students to our video-conference center at thr ROP building at our HS on my prep period. We were connected with the yeoman assistance of Jim and Tom Wolsky by our Vistium Units to a very nice genetleman from NASA in Houston. We had set it up to simulcast live over our local access television station, plus we video-taped the whole thing so we can show it again. Meanwhile back at our school, students in our classes were allowed to tune in on the classrooom teevees and this time the whole thing worked!!
We were introduced to two young NASA folks, a women physicist from Oklahoma, and a future Astronaut-in-training (named James Dean!) who has relatives near us. Their video viewers took us first to an overview of the Space Station Mock up trainer, which was in a building 600 feet long and also has a Space Shuttle mockup. We zoomed in to a number of places. Then the two guides took us by remote access INSIDE the mockup room, and explained everything and how the equipment works and how it had been developed.
I should stop here and say that this experience was the final activity of a project in which students constructed 3-d models of self-sufficient living Habitats, including "Astropheres" for up to 12 adults, a complicated engineering/science/math project working with volume and surface area. You can find out more about this project from our web page at: http://www.mcn.org/ed/cur/cw/cwhome.html. So the students had lots of questions and were pretty well prepared for issues which related to the activity. We were shown where and how the astronauts sleep, go to the bathroom, work on botanicals and crystals, etc. We were able to converse directly with the NASA guides in order to ask question as the presentation was happening. Students asked questions about how astronauts were recruited, whether the botanicals would supply oxygen for breathing (not planned at present), what happens when you get a whole in the suit, what is done with waste, and many other topics. The quality of the images were very good. We were running on two ISDN lines (one for audio and one for video). Thank you PacBell!
When we left after an hour (we could have stayed much much longer but I had to go back to class!), we agreed to do another video-conference in the fall, this time opening up questions via phone from our community at large. I floated off of the ground for the rest of the day and still haven't come down entirely.
This was pretty new for NASA too, and they were almost as excited as we were. This was one of the first times they had tested their remote cameras and mikes. I have the e-mail addresses of the guides and they said we could ask more questions. When we got back to our classroom up at the Middle School, the kids applauded us as we came in and I got some high fives from staff members!
Like I said: Wow!
This model of video-conferencing is called the "inner and outer circle" and is a very interesting model for the technology, because while a small group has direct access a much greater audience has access which can incude some interaction.
What a difference a day makes! Color me star-blinded!
Cory
(Now back to our broadcast)
.....Design Team: Ryan Birchard, Zoe Colby, Lena Stavely, Michaela Biaggi, Wes Thurston, Ford Norris, Mickey Kitahara, Nick Sharrer. Our habitat was ASTROSPHERE.
Our total volume of all the rooms was 25,783 cuft
The total of the Surface Area of all the rooms was 13,878 Sqft
The cost of the whole thing was $138,780,000.
It's shaped like a person, really long so that people will have more privacy, and be "spaced" out.
One big communal bedroom because we thought it be fun, and when people want privacy walls come down and you get sleeping cubicals. Otherwise it's one really big bed. The bathrooms are above the bedrooms and at the end of the arms. There is no smoking because of the nuclear power and the missles.
This Astrosphere is in the clouds. The way we stay up is by a cable attached to both our sphere and the moon. We can control how high or how low in by buttons to the control station on the moon, where it will electrically wind down or up. We have a garden room which suplies with oxygen and food. The energy room will keep them physically fit, and gravity is cheated by gravity chambered rooms. Some rooms are not pressurized and you can float around in it.
Written by Theresa Jones
...The design team was Linka Rowland, Felicia Gealey, Ruby Anderson, Jamie Wilson, Jesse Sullivan, Kyla Farrow, and Anna Mattuizzo. Our habitat was a TERRASPHERE.
Our total volume was 46,776 cuft
Our total surface area was 274,503.95 sqft.
The total cost of our whole project was $2,745,030,000.95.
To make inside food, we will grow food in our garden room. The rooms in our house are mostly all glass, therefore letting the sun and light into our house. Most of our bedrooms are single, allowing privacy. For people who don't really mind, there is one big bedroom. Our oxygen supply comes from the trees and plants we have growing throughout our house and garden room.
Some positive aspects of our Terrasphere are that it is built exactly like a house, to make things more comfortable. Also, it is made out of glass so that we can get light and make it especially easy for our plants and animals to survive. We have a pasture in our garden room in which we raise cows and chickens for eggs, meat, and milk. We have also brought food and stored it in our storage rooms.
Written by Linka Rowland
Terrasphere
Design Team: Brigitte Huff, Gabe Poehlmann, Bryan Hass, Jacquelyn Taylor, Jeneel Miller, and Jessica Hosford.
Total Volume: 26,717
Total Surface Area:15,024.5
Total Cost: $150,240,000.5
We built a Terrasphere. It has a unique shape and the design is very creative. The shape resembles a pig. It has front and back legs. a tail, and of course a snout. It s very efficient
and we think it would work quite well in reality.
We will grow all our food in the botanical garden. In making the garden we added 200 cubic feet to the 2800 cubic feet to make it bigger. It is tall so that fruit trees and other tall plants can grow inside the garden. The vegetables are grown on shelves in rows in the garden so that there will be more room for all the food they need to grow.
Because the people will breathe the same air for a year we figured the air would become quite old and stale. So we designed each room in the Terrasphere with garden beds outlining two of the walls. There will be trees and bushes growing in all the beds in order to purify the air and add more oxygen. Of course there won't be enough oxygen from just the plants so we have a fan/filter hooked up to each room. Once the fan/filter takes in the air it filters out all the extra carbon dioxide and puts more oxygen in the air. it also keeps the air circulating through all the rooms.
We took each individuals privacy into great consideration and decided to build twelve individual bedrooms. We made the rooms small and simple but, it is a place of their own. We designed it so that the bedrooms are in groups of two right next to each other. So if couples or friendships form and people want to share bedrooms they can break out the dividing wall between the two rooms and make one big room.
Written by Brigitte Huff
Spaces for a Habitat
Criteria: 12 people (6 female; 6 male); One year; totally self-sufficient
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Choices: Terrasphere/Aquasphere/Astrosphere
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Bedrooms/Sleeping Quarters 3200 cuft
Bathroom/Shower Facilities 2400 cuft (total, for up to 4 bathrooms)
Kitchen/Dining 2000 cuft
Exercise/Recreatio 3000 cuft
Water Supply/Filtering 1500 cuft
Waste Management/Recycling 1200 cuft
Storage Room(s) 2200 cuft
Living/Meeting/Counseling Space 1600 cuft
Botanical Garden/Lab 2800 cuft
Control/Communication Room 1800 cuft
First Aid Med Room 800 cuft
Library 600 cuft
Shop 900 cuft
Other room of your choice 1000 cuft
Solar Cells for power 200 sqft
Fuel Tanks/Storage 2000 cuft
You must not go OVER these limits for each room. You can go under, but you may not be more than a total of 1000 cuft under for the total or your team will be penalized for underbudgetting and a 20% cost penalty will be added.
Cost is determined by SURFACE AREA in sqft, NOT by the VOLUME in cuft! Each sqft will cost $10K.
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Remember that some shapes are more efficient than other in terms of how volume relates to surface area. Compact shapes are better than longer shapes and cylinders and spheres are better than rectangular or triangular prisms. That means that if you use better shapes, your budget will be lower for the same volume because each shpae will have less surface area.
.......You can send comments or questions to:
cwisnia@mcn.org. Click here to get;
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