Objective
This activity is a thought problem good for
CAP cadets. It is a situational problem, and cadets can pit their thinking skills
against those of the NASA experts.
Time Requirement
About 20 minutes. More
time for discussion is good.
Materials
Printing out and duplicating the Item Lists ahead of time
is nice, but not required. This activity can even be done by presenting the list of
items on a whiteboard and having the cadets copy them down onto a sheet of paper.
Background
The situation goes like this: Your
spaceship has just crash-landed on the dark side of the moon. You were scheduled to
rendezvous with your mother ship 200 miles away on the light side of the moon, but the
rough landing has destroyed your ship and ruined all but the 15 items listed in this
exercise.
Since you are the commander, and your crew's
survival depends upon reaching the mother ship, you must choose the the most critical
items available for the 200 mile trek across the moon's surface. You must determine
the "priority" of each survival item and list them. Back on Earth, NASA
would have given you their priority, but no contact can be made. The decision is
yours. How would your leadership skills compare to those of the NASA "home
team?"
Survival Items List
| . |
Item |
NASA
Score |
Your
Score |
Your
Error Points |
Team
Ranking |
Team
Error Points |
| 1 |
Box of Matches |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 2 |
Food Concentrate |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 3 |
50 Feet of Nylon Rope |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 4 |
Parachute Silk |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 5 |
Solar Powered Heating Unit |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 6 |
Two .45 Caliber Pistols & Ammunition |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 7 |
One Case of Evaporated Milk |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 8 |
Stellar Map |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 9 |
Two 100 Pound Oxygen Tanks |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 10 |
Self-Inflating Life Raft |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 11 |
Magnetic Compass |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 12 |
Five Gallons of Water |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 13 |
Signal Flares |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 14 |
First Aid Kit (Includes Injection Needles) |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
| 15 |
Solar Powered FM Transceiver |
= |
= |
= |
= |
= |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
TOTALS |
|
|
= |
|
= |
Procedure
Hand out a copy of this
problem to each cadet in the squadron. Explain the situation and then have them rank
the 15 items in their order of priority.
Have the cadets then break
into small teams. Have the teams discuss the items, and have each team prepare a
list of the items ranked by priority.
After the cadets are done,
start a general discussion session and get each team to present why they ranked the items
as they did.
Then present the NASA ranking
numbers. Explain why NASA ranked things as important or not important.
Calculate the difference in
points of each item on the list for the individual and team scores. (Make everything
positive numbers here; if the cadet scored one item as a 4 and NASA scored it as a 7 or
vice versa, the difference is 3.)
Compare how the squadron did
overall against the NASA figures.
Discussion
The
NASA scores can be obtained by clicking here.
Some of the fun questions to
discuss include:
Who had the lowest overall
score? Was there a standout individual?
Did any team do particularly
well?
Did most people do better when
they discussed things as a team?
Did anybody's score go down
when they joined a team versus their individual gut instinct?
This activity is a wonderful
venture into priority thinking. It could generate some excellent critical thinking
skills if the AEO would relate this to getting stranded in an "Earth-bound" snow
storm or if someone gets lost in a strange city. It could be pointed out that one of
the first steps toward alleviation of panic is to take command of the situation and start
establishing priorities for a solution. The cross-correlation in this may be
invaluable to cadets in the future.
Safety Concerns
Other than a random paper cut, pencil injury
or a headache from using their noggin, there is virtually no risky elements to this
activity.
Adapted from: Aerospace 2000, Volume 2
Published by the Aerospace Education Training Directorate
National Headquarters, Civil Air Patrol.
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