A Space Adventure - Day 4 - Week 3 (Mark Day School)

Thursday is our “last full build day.” We say that because tomorrow at 2pm we invite families to come and Play/Test/Appreciate our builds. It’s our moment in the sun to show off our space ship and space shelter and all the effort and tool skills we’ve applied this week. But that 2pm deadline means that our afternoon build session is quite short. We’re focused on priorities and often on safety testing anything that tinkerers can climb or ride on. It’s a crucial step of the process and one which we all learn from.

It’s a moment to have great conversations about things like “the sounds that wood makes” or “tracing the forces on wood and screws from the top of a structure to the ground.” We use our senses to observe everything. “Does it wobble?” is a useful question for someone to ask. And we end up having discussions about compression versus sheer strength. And about how we know if a structure can support our weight.

Securing the pivot point below the space ship.

After lunch, I talked about the properties of mylar and how this remarkable insulating material in space blankets was used to protect the Hubble telescope. Hope provided an insightful lesson on gravity and planet mass. We told tinkerers that our newly discovered planet had a similar mass and diameter compared to Earth and therefore would have similar gravity. Hope attended NASA’s Space Camp in Huntsville Alabama a few summers ago and has a passion for science.

Working with the murphy bed frame and mattress materials.

Wrapping our habitat in mylar…

…and painting masterpieces for our bedroom walls.

We’re learning to use new tools (jig saw, heated rope cutter, pulleys) but also learning more about the tools we already trained on. Today saw tinkerers making angled cuts on our chop saw (45° is a popular one, especially for triangular support beams) and drilling holes with larger bits than our usual 1/8” ones we use for pilot holes. We sometimes have to lower the torque on a drill to allow us to more easily create holes with larger diameters.

Learning to use a speed square to quickly make 45° lines.

The chop saw gets set at 45° before we do our “is everybody ready?” call to check that each tinkerer and collaborator is wearing safety glasses and ear protection.

Definitely trying harder than usual! It’s not easy to drill straight from a low vantage point. It takes extra pressure on the back of the drill.

Here are more photos from our busy day today…