Educator Resources

Honors Astronomy, Winter/Spring 2020 at Santa Barbara City College

 

Professor Jatila van der Veen
Wednesdays, 08:15 – 09:20

This is a research seminar in current topics in astrophysics and space science. Here you get to think about problems that people at NASA and other agencies are working on for the future of space exploration, for which answers are not yet known The topic for this year is …

Human Colonization of the Moon

Here you can follow the course week by week by downloading the lecture slides. Students and educators are welcome to use these as resources for classes and research projects. Sources are cited on each slide.

  1. Introduction: Why is the Moon important?
  2. A Brief History of Lunar Exploration
  3. Arriving and Surviving
  4. Providing Power for a Lunar Settlement
  5. Finding Ice and other Volatiles on the Moon

    The following three sound files go with the fifth lecture.

    1. A pure A at 440 Hz (p. 7)
    2. If you could “hear” the visible spectrum of hydrogen, this is what it might sound like, if the frequencies of vibration were slowed a trillion times (p. 10).

    3. If you could “hear” just the H-alpha (656 nm) line, this is what it might sound like, if the frequency of vibration were slowed a trillion times (p.12).
  6. What would a Human Settlement on the Moon Look Like?
  7. Class #7 was a Zoom lecture on the Ethics of Lunar Colonization by Professor Michael Waltemathe of the University of Ruhr,
    Bochum, in Germany. Professor Waltemathe is one of our collaborators on the Interstellar Center.

  8. The politics of developing a human settlement on the Moon

After a few weeks of time to collaborate in groups, the students gave lectures of their own, going into greater detail on the topics discussed in the first 8 weeks of the course. With their permission, here are some of their presentations:


Student Presentations

  1. A Brief History of Lunar Exploration
  2. Arriving and Surviving
  3. Finding Water and Other Resources
  4. Providing Power for a Lunar Colony
  5. Designing a Lunar Colony
  6. Politics of Colonizing the Moon
  7. Ethical Considerations