Today our students finished designing their ships! At the start of class we touched on how many humans would be necessary to maintain a healthy gene pool on a multi-generational ship. With this in mind they gave thought to the scale the ship will have to be. It turns out that we’d need a diverse onboard population on par with the population of Brookline!

Each student took what they learned during the design process and implemented those concepts into the designs of their spaceships. At first they drew up paper sketches and blueprints, and by the end of class we were building physical representations of their drawings. During construction we payed attention to the kinds of materials we chose to use. In practice we used foam panels and styrofoam plates to create lightweight insulating hulls. The cylindrical nature of their ships, or “saucers”, furthermore allows the inhabitants to experience artificial gravity so long as those structures remain in rotation during spaceflight.