OPENING QUESTION: We'll start out with a quick (and *gentle*) quiz on what we've talked about the LONG mission to the planet Mars.

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LEARNING GOAL: I'll review videos that show the difficulty of living on Mars during today's class.

WORDS O' THE DAY:

• Energy/Heat
• Food
• Water
• Air/Air Pressure
• Shelter

WORK O' THE DAY

Consider what it would be like to actually live on Mars. Every time that you walk outside you have to get fully suited up (more on that tomorrow) and walk through a "air lock" just to get outside.

What is an air lock, why is it so important and how does it work? (Please discuss)

Now let's look at THIS video (from the movie The Martian) that shows what can happen when an airlock fails. Notice on the screen that the actual air pressure inside the "hab" (short for habitat) is shown. Write that down.

Do you agree that this is an accurate representation? Why or why not?

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The science in the movie "The Martian" is very, very good. However, there is one key scene in which the science is very inaccurate (For all of us nerds out there: The writer of the book on which the movie is based KNEW that the science was inaccurate, but he HAD to find some way to strand our hero on Mars. The only other thing he could think of was a computer malfunction and that was already done very well in the class ice film "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Anywho-- from what you know and have learned about Mars so far, why is that scene so inaccurate?

Please discuss.

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If time permits.... lava tubes on Mars and why they are ESSENTIAL to success for the first colonizers on that planet.

A lava tube on Earth (I used to go exploring those on the Big Island of Hawaii when I lived there)

Scientists are *mostly* sure that these are Lava Tubes on the Moon

And we have THESE sorts of pictures from Mars.... which means (what?)

So if those ARE lava tubes on Mars, we hope that we can live down there:

Have a conversation with your group about the many (?) benefits we get from living underground in a Martian Lava Tube (GO!)