Sustainability Camp Curriculum

SPACESHIP EARTH

Time:   90 minutes (1/2 block; ideally use after Welcome to Sustainability)
Place:  Tofino Botanical Gardens, outdoors or indoors

Overview

Earth functions as a massive life-support system for six billion human beings, as well as the trillions of other life forms that share the planet with us. Often students do not consider the earth as a system, nor human society as a system dependent on that ecosystem. This giant ecosystem is also a closed system – where everything is cycled, and recycled; nothing comes in and nothing goes out. The Spaceship Earth activity can be used to illustrate a variety of subjects within the context of ecological sustainability, and is a great opening to a program. The activity challenges students to design their own spaceship (their own ecological and human system), which triggers all sorts of questions and decisions about how people can (and should?!) live on “Spaceship Earth”. Designing a long duration space mission demonstrates that any life-support system we depend on will be patterned after that of Earth.

Prescribed Learning Outcomes

• Grade 7 Science: Assess the requirements for sustaining healthy local ecosystems; Evaluate human impacts on local ecosystems.
• Grade 6 and 7 Physical Education: Identify and demonstrate positive behaviours that show respect for individuals’ potential, interests and cultural backgrounds.
• Grade 6 and 7 Social Studies: Identify and clarify a problem, issue or inquiry.
• Grade 6 Language Arts: Create real and invented narratives, descriptions and informal oral presentations.
• Grade 7 Language Arts: Develop strategies for resolving conflict and solving problems.
• Grade 6 Personal Planning: Analyse factors that affect global health issues.
• Grade 7 Personal Planning: Practice responsible decision-making.
• Grade 6 Fine Arts: Express ideas and emotions using verbal and non-verbal communication; Demonstrate respect for the work of self and others.
• Grade 7 Fine Arts: Make 2D and 3D images for specific purposes; Demonstrate leadership and responsibility within a group.

Objectives

1. Students will understand the complexity of systems and recognize that Earth is a closed system.
2. Students will engage in a problem solving and critical thinking task to design a life-support system that is sustainable for thousands of years.
3. Students will explore questions of ecological sustainability in a small group of peers, challenging them to come up with and articulate their own answers to community sustainability.

Materials

• One large cardstock paper (~22” x 30” paper) for each group of students.
• Collection of pens, pencils, felts etc, for drawing spaceship.

Procedure

1. Tell the students that something has happened to earth, and that people are preparing to leave. We are on the doorstep of an environmental catastrophe and people can no longer live on the planet. It is uncertain as to when, or even if, people will be able to return to planet Earth.
2. Explain that their task is to design a spaceship that will support a certain number of people for potentially thousands, or even millions, of years. Explain that they can take whatever they want from Earth, that their spaceship can be any size (within reason), but that it must be a fully functioning life supporting system (ie. all the people must be able to live on this spaceship indefinitely).
3. Tell students not to focus on how the spaceship will travel in space, but on how the people will live inside it. Remind them that this is a closed system; once they leave earth nothing will come in and nothing can leave the spaceship (eg. they cannot send their garbage or sewage out into space; they can however capture the sun’s energy).

In making decisions about what their spaceship system will be like, students must discuss and resolve questions such as:

• How many people will you bring? (reasonable, eg. 1000 not one million)
• What will people eat?
• How will you provide adequate drinking water?
• Where will the sewage and garbage go?
• What technologies will you use?
• Will there be animals? bikes? cars?
• Will there be schools, hospitals, government?
1. Get students into groups of 4 or 5. Hand out one cardstock paper to each group.
2. Ask them to take about 15 minutes to brainstorm all the ideas they have and discuss the design of their spaceship. After your sign off, they will then draw their spaceship on the other side of the paper.
3. Circulate amongst the groups to ask probing questions such as those listed above, and others. Ask groups to get your sign off before they start drawing their spaceship on the other side of the paper. Your sign off will be one final chance to ask any more probing questions and to test some of the assumptions students may have made. (eg. ask them to explain their drinking water/wastewater system, or their government structure, or ask them how many males and females they will bring on board… why?). Search for holes in their system design, and ask probing questions that stimulate them to think deeper, and to ensure the spaceship is a closed system.
4. Allow ample time for groups to draw their spaceship systems. (30-40 minutes) Tell them that they are then going to present their spaceships to the rest of the class. Give a few minutes to prepare for their presentations.
5. Ask each group to present the details of their systems and why they chose what they did. Invite the rest of the class to ask questions of the group. Will these people on this spaceship survive for thousands of years? Why or why not? (take about 5 minutes per group).
6. Debrief the activity: What did you learn? What is a closed system? What are some of the key requirements for a spaceship to be sustainable over time? How are your spaceships similar to Earth? Have we designed our own lifestyles and communities to be sustainable over a long period of time? (5 to 10 minutes)
7. Students may enjoy the following quotes:

“There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”
   -- Marshall McLuhan

“You get out there in space and say to yourself: that’s home. That’s the only home we have, and the only one we’re going to have for a long time”
   -- Edgar Dean Mitchell, Apollo 14 Astronaut

As part of Earth's crew we all have a personal responsibility to make sure our planet is healthy and functional.