Live/Work/Play in Earth Orbit 01
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Earth/Space LWP-Earth-Orbit-01 Live/Work/Play in Earth Orbit 01 Bob & George • Bob Albrecht & George Firedrake • [email protected] This eBook is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. You may give all or part of this eBook free to anyone. You may use it in other ways described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Reality expands to fill the available fantasies. To expand your personal reality, fantasize, fantasize, and keep on fantasizing. – Bob & George This eBook is for teachers, tutors, librarians, parents, siblings, grandparents, and others who help learners learn math and science. It is A-OK to copy stuff from this eBook, modify it, enhance it, and paste it into your documents that you give free to students – or to anyone. IMAGINE/FANTASIZE Now: Live, work and play in Earth orbit in the International Space Station (ISS). Soon: Live, work and play in Earth orbit in resort hotels, research centers, factories, sports arena, junkyards and other space habitats. Far out: Millions of people live, work, and play in communities in Earth orbit. IMAGINE/FANTASIZE Today and tomorrow and beyond: You and your students imagine living, working and playing in a resort hotel, research center, factory, sports arena, junkyard or other community in Earth orbit. We will search the Internet for information and inspiration, and contrive mathemagical alakazams related to living, working and playing in Earth orbit. We are not experts, so much of this eBook will consist of links to Internet sites where we and you and your students can learn about living, working and playing in Earth orbit. Bob & George? Bob is a 90-year-old human (as of February 2020). George is a dragon. Read about Bob & George at Information Age Education (IAE): http://iae-pedia.org/Robert_Albrecht. Bob & George write math & science eBooks and post them on the Internet for free download and use as PDF files and Word files at http://i-a-e.org/downloads/cat_view/86-free-ebooks-by-bob-albrecht.html 1 Earth/Space LWP-Earth-Orbit-01 Table of Contents (TOC) Today in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO): The International Space Station (ISS) Live, Work and Play in Earth Orbit: On the Moon Things to Come in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) The High Frontier: 1976 and 2019 Appendix 01 Earth and Moon Data Appendix 02 Orbital Equations DragonFun image by Marcie Hawthorne http://marciehawthorne.com/ 2 Earth/Space LWP-Earth-Orbit-01 Today in Low Earth Orbit (LEO): International Space Station (ISS) | TOC Today astronauts and scientists (the ISS crew) live, work and play in the International Space Station (ISS) in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). • International Space Station https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html • Current ISS Crew http://www.ariss.org/current-iss-crew.html • International Space Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station • Low Earth orbit (LEO) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit Paraphrased from International Space Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station: The International Space Station (ISS) is a habitable artificial satellite in low Earth orbit (LEO). Its first component launched into orbit in 1998, and the ISS is now the largest human-made body in low Earth orbit and can often be seen with the naked eye from Earth. Your students can spot the ISS and watch it as it traverses the sky above their neighborhoods. Imagine living/working/playing aboard the ISS. • Spot the ISS. Where? When? https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/ Table ISS-01 ISS size, mass, and pressure data from Wikipedia International Space Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station Data retrieved 2019-05-11. This data might be different today. Length: 72.8 m (meters) Width: 108.5 m (meters) Height: approximately 20 m (meters) Mass: 419,725 kg (kilograms) Pressurized volume (May 2016): 931.57 m3 (meters cubed – cubic meters) Atmospheric pressure: 1 atmosphere (1 Earth atmosphere at sea level) ISS picture purloined from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station Thank you, Wikipedia. You are always there when we need you. Reality expands to fill the available fantasies. Your students can imagine living, working and playing as astronauts/scientists aboard the ISS. Spot the ISS https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/ 3 Earth/Space LWP-Earth-Orbit-01 Table ISS-01 up yonder presents data retrieved from Wikipedia, our favorite source of information. Table ISS-02 below displays data we found at NASA’s official ISS site. Table ISS-02 ISS facts and figures from NASA International Space Station facts and figures https://www.nasa.gov/feature/facts-and-figures Data retrieved 2019-05-11. It may change as ISS goes ‘round and ‘round Earth. Data from NASA ISS Facts and Figures 2019-05-11 Data in metric units ☺ Pressurized module length: 240 feet 73.2 meters Truss length: 357. 5 feet 109 meters Solar array length: 239.4 feet 73.0 meters Mass: 925,335 pounds (See Note 1) 419,725 kilograms (See Note 1) Habitable volume: 13,696 cubic feet 388.83 cubic meters Pressurized volume: 32,333 cubic feet 915.57 cubic meters Power generation by solar arrays 75 to 90 kilowatts Note 1: Oops, pound is a unit of force, not mass, in archaic US customary units. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units Mass is a unit of amount of matter in the International System of Units (SI). ☺ https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/si-units The ISS’s weight depends on its distance from Earth’s center: 925,335 pounds at Earth sea level. The ISS’s mass (419,725 kilograms) is the same at any distance from Earth’s center. Yeah! The unit of mass in US customary units is the slug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug_(unit). The mass of the ISS in US customary units is approximately 28,760 slugs. The Banana Slug is the mascot of the University of California, Santa Cruz. https://www.ucsc.edu/about/mascot.html Go, Banana Slug, Go! The mass of the ISS is 419,725 kilograms (2019-05-11). The mass of the water in a 1-liter bottle of water is 1 kilogram. The mass of the ISS is equal to the mass of the water in 419,725 1-liter bottles of water. • If you drink 3 liters of water a day (3 kilograms a day), how long will it take you to drink 419,725 kilograms (419,725 liters) of water in days? In weeks? In months? In years? The pressurized volume of the ISS is approximately 916 cubic meters (2019-05-11). The volume of one liter of water is 1000 cubic centimeters, or 1/1000 cubic meter. 1000 liters of water has a volume of 1 cubic meter. The ISS’s 916 cubic meters of pressurized volume can hold 916 cubic meters of water, or 916,000 liters of water. The mass of water that would fill the ISS’s pressurized volume is 916,000 kilograms. Are all those numbers correct? Your students can check and say yea or nay. Fantasize: Would a satellite full or partially full of water be a great aquatic environment for dolphins and bioengineered humans with gills? Imagine aquahumans and dolphins living, working and playing in an Earth-orbit habitat full or partially full of water. Supply water and life support from Earth? From the Moon? From the asteroid belt? Your students can investigate and fantasize. 4 Earth/Space LWP-Earth-Orbit-01 ISS, Snoopy and the Red Baron The ISS’s solar array wingspan is 73 meters (2019-05-11). The wingspan of Snoopy’s Sopwith Camel is 8.53 meters. How many Sopwith Camel wingspans placed end to end equals the wingspan of the ISS solar array? Sopwith Camel picture filched from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopwith_Camel Snoopy’s Sopwith Camel The wingspan of the Red Baron’s Fokker DR 1 triplane is 7.19 meters. How many Fokker DR 1 wingspans placed end to end equals the wingspan of the ISS solar array? Fokker DR 1 picture pirated from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_Dr.I Red Baron’s Fokker Dr 1 The ISS’s solar arrays generate 75 to 90 kilowatts of electrical power (2019-05-11). • How many 20-watt LED light bulbs will 75 kilowatts (kW) light up? • How many 20-watt LED light bulbs will 90 kW light up? • How many laptop computers will 75 kW power? How many will 90 kW power? • How many smart phones will 75 kW power? How many will 90 kW power? The above comparisons are based on data posted by NASA 2019-05-11. As Earth and the ISS go ‘round and ‘round in their orbits, the ISS may change in size, mass, electrical power and other ways. To view the latest data, visit https://www.nasa.gov/feature/facts-and-figures. 5 Earth/Space LWP-Earth-Orbit-01 ISS Orbital Alakazams The International Space Station’s orbit is almost circular, slightly elliptical. The orbital plane is inclined 51.64 degrees to Earth’s equatorial plane. Table ISS-03 ISS Orbital Inclination: 51.64 degrees from Earth’s Equator Orbital inclination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_inclination Earth observatory https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OrbitsCatalog/ About the picture over yonder → The horizontal line labeled ‘Earth’s rotation’ is Earth’s equator. The rotation is from west to east as shown by the arrow (→). The line labeled ‘satellite orbit’ is the path of a satellite whose orbit is inclined to Earth’s equator. The satellite’s direction of motion is shown by the arrow (). Picture heisted from Earth observatory Catalog of Earth Satellite Orbits https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OrbitsCatalog/ Great place to learn about low Earth orbit (LEO), mid Earth orbit (MEO), high Earth orbit (HEO), Global Positioning System (GPS) orbits and geostationary orbits.