NASA Exercise: Survival on the Moon

Droolinggimp

Droolinggimp

Droolinggimp

Soldato
Joined
16 May 2004
Posts
7,130
Location
Derby
A group exercise my wife did yesterday on her college induction. I though it was good and me being me tried to think out of the box but alas, I failed.

I have the actual NASA rankings for the items. The difference between yours and NASA per item is added up to give you a score. The lower the better as you have to try and get as close to NASA rankins as possible.

example. if you gave X a 6 ranking and NASA gave X a 10 you will score 4 with 4 being the difference.
My wife and her group got a score of 42 whilst I failed with a score of 64. I ranked them solo with no discussion.

Scenario:

You are a member of a space crew originally scheduled to rendezvous with a mother ship on the lighted surface of the moon. However, due to mechanical difficulties, your ship was forced to land at a spot some 200 miles from the rendezvous point. During reentry and landing, much of the equipment aboard was damaged and, since survival depends on reaching the mothership, the most critical items available must be chosen for the 200-mile trip. Below are the listed 15 items left intact and undamaged after landing. Your task is to rank order them in terms of their importance for your crew in allowing them to reach the rendezvous point. Place number 1 by most important item, the number 2 by second most important, and so on through number 15 for least important.

Items:

  • Box of matches
  • Food concentrate
  • 50 feet of nylon rope
  • parachute silk
  • Portable heating unit
  • Two .45 calibre pistols
  • Once case of dehydrated milk
  • Two 100 lb tanks of oxygen
  • Stellar map
  • Self-inflating lift raft
  • Magnetic compass
  • 20 liters of water
  • Signal flares
  • First aid kit, including injection needle
  • Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter

Lets see what you can do. Once a few rankings have been posted I will post your score. Remember, LOW score is good HIGH score is bad. Once everyone gets fed up I will post the NASA results.
 
  • Box of matches - 15
  • Food concentrate - 10
  • 50 feet of nylon rope - 6
  • parachute silk - 9
  • Portable heating unit - 3
  • Two .45 calibre pistols - 11
  • Once case of dehydrated milk - 8
  • Two 100 lb tanks of oxygen - 1
  • Stellar map - 4
  • Self-inflating lift raft - 7
  • Magnetic compass - 12
  • 20 liters of water - 2
  • Signal flares - 14
  • First aid kit, including injection needle - 13
  • Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter - 5
 
15 Box of matches
4 Food concentrate
6 50 feet of nylon rope
8 Parachute silk
13 Portable heating unit
11 Two .45 caliber pistols
12 1 case dehydrated milk
1 2 hundred-pound tanks of oxygen
3 Stellar map (of the moon’s constellation)
9 Life raft
14 Magnetic compass
2 20 litres of water
10 Signal flares
7 First aid kit containing injection needles
5 Solar-powered FM receiver transmitter

iirc, the pistols can be used as makeshift jetpacks.
 
Droolinggimp said:
  • Box of matches 14
  • Food concentrate 7
  • 50 feet of nylon rope 8
  • parachute silk 9
  • Portable heating unit 11
  • Two .45 calibre pistols 13
  • Once case of dehydrated milk 12
  • Two 100 lb tanks of oxygen 1
  • Stellar map 3
  • Self-inflating lift raft 10
  • Magnetic compass 15
  • 20 liters of water 2
  • Signal flares 5
  • First aid kit, including injection needle 6
  • Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter 4
Click to expand...

edit: just thinking, the self inflating raft should be higher up the priorities.
 
Last edited:
  • Box of matches 15
  • Food concentrate 4
  • 50 feet of nylon rope 8
  • parachute silk 9
  • Portable heating unit 10
  • Two .45 calibre pistols 14
  • Once case of dehydrated milk 3
  • Two 100 lb tanks of oxygen 1
  • Stellar map 6
  • Self-inflating lift raft 13
  • Magnetic compass 11
  • 20 liters of water 2
  • Signal flares 12
  • First aid kit, including injection needle 5
  • Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter 7
 
In no order, compass, flares, rope, fm reciever and oxygen tanks.

You can't eat or drink, can't take off helmet. Can't see how a heater will heat you through the thick suit maybe a bit
Can't see the use of pistols no life on the moon. Matches wouldn't light not enough oxygen. Also map, milk, raft and first aid useless.

Not sure about silk.
 
jsmoke said:
Matches wouldn't light not enough oxygen
Click to expand...
they would, they just wouldn't burn very long. afaik it is a chemical reaction that causes a match to ignite so oxygen isn't needed initially. however once the chemical at the tip was burned out the match would go out rather than the stem continuing to burn.
 
jsmoke said:
In no order, compass, flares, rope, fm reciever and oxygen tanks.

You can't eat or drink, can't take off helmet. Can't see how a heater will heat you through the thick suit maybe a bit
Can't see the use of pistols no life on the moon. Matches wouldn't light not enough oxygen. Also map, milk, raft and first aid useless.

Not sure about silk.
Click to expand...

See, this is the way I was thinking. Outside of the box. Oxygen and water is very important but like you said, how can you take it in if you can't remove your helmet... And my wife laughed at me. The map though could be used to guide you using star positions and constellations etc,.
 
  • Box of matches - 14
  • Food concentrate - 5
  • 50 feet of nylon rope - 10
  • parachute silk - 8
  • Portable heating unit - 3
  • Two .45 calibre pistols - 13
  • Once case of dehydrated milk - 11
  • Two 100 lb tanks of oxygen - 1
  • Stellar map - 7
  • Self-inflating lift raft - 6
  • Magnetic compass - 15
  • 20 liters of water - 2
  • Signal flares - 12
  • First aid kit, including injection needle - 9
  • Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter - 4
 
Armageus said:
Use the pistols to shoot any expendable members of the crew :)
Click to expand...

Obviously you can move faster on the moon but even if you got upto a sustained 15 mph you'd be lucky to make it in time and that would be almost impossible to keep up even using items to aid propulsion.

EDIT: Apparently someone in good condition could probably hit around 40mph on the moon though sustaining that over distance is another matter. But if you could you could pretty much leave most of that behind heh - though it seems the actual horizontal speed is far slower as you are going up a lot more vertical as well.
 
Last edited:
Droolinggimp said:
See, this is the way I was thinking. Outside of the box. Oxygen and water is very important but like you said, how can you take it in if you can't remove your helmet... And my wife laughed at me. The map though could be used to guide you using star positions and constellations etc,.
Click to expand...

By using the injection needed in the helmets feeding tube.
 
  • Box of matches 15
  • Food concentrate 4
  • 50 feet of nylon rope 6
  • parachute silk 8
  • Portable heating unit 13
  • Two .45 calibre pistols 11
  • Once case of dehydrated milk 12
  • Two 100 lb tanks of oxygen 1
  • Stellar map 3
  • Self-inflating lift raft 9
  • Magnetic compass 14
  • 20 liters of water 2
  • Signal flares 10
  • First aid kit, including injection needle 7
  • Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter 5
 
jsmoke said:
In no order, compass, flares, rope, fm reciever and oxygen tanks.

You can't eat or drink, can't take off helmet. Can't see how a heater will heat you through the thick suit maybe a bit
Can't see the use of pistols no life on the moon. Matches wouldn't light not enough oxygen. Also map, milk, raft and first aid useless.

Not sure about silk.
Click to expand...

Your compass is probably pretty useless on the moon too.
 
Droolinggimp said:
See, this is the way I was thinking. Outside of the box. Oxygen and water is very important but like you said, how can you take it in if you can't remove your helmet... And my wife laughed at me. The map though could be used to guide you using star positions and constellations etc,.
Click to expand...
i've used a few assumptions such as the ability to hook the tanks to your suit to recharge it's own internal tanks, same with the water. the overview leaves so much open for assumption though and i am likely wrong. probably best to just take the gun and shoot yourself from the outset! :p
 
Two 100 lb tanks of oxygen
Stellar map
Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter
50 feet of nylon rope
parachute silk
Portable heating unit
Signal flares
20 liters of water
First aid kit, including injection needle
Food concentrate
Once case of dehydrated milk
Self-inflating lift raft
Magnetic compass
Two .45 calibre pistols
Box of matches
 
Just learned that it can get up to 127C on the moon by day and minus 173C at night. So you likely die of heat stroke or freeze to death anyway.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom