Curriculum

The Chinese Space Program Serves Notice

Space stories like this are a prime source of information for cross-disciplinary curriculum units; Politics, Technology, Science, History, Economics, Mathematics, and nothing engages young people like humans in space. This is the stuff that literacy is made of.

A Chinese astronaut, Zhai Zhigang, walked in space today and not as a tourist on the International Space Station, but for the first time as a Chinese astronaut, in a Chinese craft. This NPR report sounds like a rerun of a scene from the US space race days.

“The children are extremely excited, some of them even wear homemade astronauts’ costumes, all of them clutch Chinese flags as they wait.

“Jiayou! Jiayou!” they shout, encouraging the astronaut who’s opened the airlock and is about to venture outside.

To a huge cheer from the crowd, 42-year-old Zhai Zhigang emerges from the hatch. The students jump to their feet, waving their flags. His first movement: a wave to the cameras.

“I feel fine,” he says in Chinese. “Greetings to the people of the motherland! Greetings to the people of the world!” “

The Chinese are moving at an incredible rate, whatever the cost, and have plans to put their own space station into orbit. They’re not apart of the ISS partnership, something that needs to be rethought; the ISS is an incredible drain on funding, it would be a nice diplomatic and financial boon to have then join the ISS instead of running a competing program. The same goes for India. They haven’t put a man in orbit yet, but their space program is a serious effort that will bear fruit.

We can’t afford another space race just now.

Curricular ideas:

• Economics, Mathematics.
  • The growth of the Chinese economy and comparisons to our own. Are there parallels? What does a space program cost? Where does the money come from? What about private space ventures?
• History, Political Science.
  • The Space race and the huge roll of politics. Compare and contrast US and Chinese space program history.
• Technology,Science.
  • Micro-gravity, the ISS, Orbital Mechanics, humans in space (Nasa eClips lesson plan), etc…

© 2008 Learning Teaching.