My capstone presentation was very successful, I mostly memorized everything and only had a few stutters. Capstone helped me with my time management, researching and memorizing. Capstone was very fun and exciting because it gave me the time to research on part of my passion which is space. I hope you enjoy my capstone presentation on space travel.
Category Archives: Capstone
Answering My Main Inquiry Question
Capstone for me was a hard a project. Researching for me was very tiring and boring because I got the same information many times, I also wanted to stop researching and just relax. At the start of the project we had to fill in search terms and try them all out. Most of my search terms work but some had repetitive information so I didn’t use them. Finding a interview was hard for me. Mrs. Boyer helped me find a short interview with Andrew Rader a rocket scientist who works at SpaceX. After a really long time I found a guy named Stephan Ord through many emails calls. He is NASA’s flight Opportunities technology manager. We had a interview via Skype, it was very successful because I got three pages of notes. Writing my script was a hard part. I always came through an error like saying ‘we’ many times in the script. I was not supposed to say ‘we’ because I was not building the spacecraft. Memorizing for me was the second hardest part other than researching. I had to say paragraphs many times over and over, I always wanted to do something else. My final presentation was easy I just had to add in pictures to fit parts of my script and label some of the pictures. My main Inquiry question was
“How will designers produce spaceships that protect civilians against obstacles in space and safely bring them to their destination?”
Designers can use whipple shields to reflect off space junk or micrometeoroids. Spacecraft rarely run into micrometeoroids and can easily plug it up if a spacecraft runs into one. A spacecraft should also have an emergency air system in case they have a hole in their spacecraft, and spacecraft should have dense walls, but not to thick because the spacecraft should be light in order to move fast. The U.S. air force can also detect obstacles in space and they can tell you when you’re near one.
I learned a lot from capstone like how to organize my time better, good ways to memorize, and now I have better researching skills.
Capstone Interview #2
I had a very successful interview with Stephan Ord via Skype. Stephan Ord is NASA’s flight opportunities technology technology manager. I asked him 14 questions and he helped me type down everything he said. I learned many things including it would cost up to billions just to make satellites. Right now NASA has a mission called the S.L.S. which stands for Space Launch System, it might go to the moon but it would be so big and strong it could even go to mars! This Interview helped me a lot and gave me 4 pages worth of notes.
Capstone Interview #1
Last week I had a interview with Andrew Rader, a rocket scientist at Space X. We had a two question interview via email. I learned about Whipple Shields, they reflect off micrometeorites that fly 10 times faster than a bullet. If micrometeorites hit a spacecraft, it could rip out a huge hole in the spacecraft. He also gave me a link about Whipple Shields on Wikipedia which gave me much more information.
Capstone #2 Sub Questions
Today for homework I wrote the sub questions for Capstone. My first sub question is, “What are the risks of space travel?” This has to do with my main question, “what will the designs of spaceships for civilians be and how will the designers incorporate safety in the design?” because safety is very important. My second sub question is, “What will spaceships look like, will the spaceship even be aerodynamic?” I chose this question because in space, spaceships could look like anything, there is no wind and friction so the spaceship wont have to be aerodynamic. My third sub question is, “Will spaceships need weapons in case there are other unknown life forms?” I chose this question because maybe we might meet other unknown life forms who might be a danger to us. My fourth sub question is, “Has anyone considered the costs, and if they did who would pay for it?” I chose this question because obviously building a spaceship would cost tons of money. My last question is, “Have we started building spaceships and if not, when will the first spaceship be built?” I chose this question because I’m curious of when there will be a spaceship to tour people into the amazing universe.
Choosing a topic for Capstone
At school right now we are doing Capstone. We are doing Capstone for about two months. Capstone is doing research on a topic you choose, then creating a final product to show what you have learned and something to teach others.
On Wednesday I chose the topic Space travel for Capstone, since we are not doing an all about I’m studying the topic Spaceships for civilians that is in Space travel. It was partially a struggle for me to chose a topic because I couldn’t really do more on Exoplanets which was my passion project and I was always interested into battleships but I didn’t feel like doing Battleships because there is nothing I want to research on them. I am really interested into space travel and I want to know when the first design of a successful spaceship is out. The movies Star Wars and Star Trek really got me excited into this topic. I feel like for the site visit and interview I might have to go to NASA or Space X which makes me really excited but I’m not sure I’ll be even able to get there. Yesterday and today everybody got a large poster and started brainstorming questions about their topic on post-its then putting the post-its onto the poster. My main question is “what will the designs of spaceships for civilians be and how will the designers incorporate safety in the design?” I will have to research more on this topic for Capstone. Right now I don’t have my sub-questions but soon I will have them.