Designing a Spacecraft’s Outer Body

Traditional schools focus on teaching multiple connected concepts in isolation. This is useful for understanding, but it lacks real world complexity and depth. One such example is the concept of heat, and several associated concepts like boiling and melting point, thermal expansion, heat capacity and thermal conductivity.

All these concepts find application when considering designing a spacecraft’s body which needs to remain solid at high temperatures, should transfer minimal heat inside the spacecraft as well as expand as little as possible so that it retains the desired shape. In this lesson outlined below, we allow students to explore properties of different materials to help them arrive at an ideal design.

Children can experience this, and many other lessons, in Tuva OIS Summer School.