Fly me to the
Moon
Vocabulary
• Crew Module (CM): The part of the spacecraft where
the astronauts live and work
• Crew Module Weight: The total weight of the CM
including provisions and the crew
• Crew Size (Crew): The total number of astronauts
• Dry Weight (m1): The weight of the spacecraft fully
loaded excluding the propellant
• Engine Module (EM): The part of a spacecraft that
holds the propellant tanks and the rocket engine
spacecraft were bountiful, and imaginations could
soar.
Given our astronautics concepts for S.T.E.M. education projects, the Boeing Space Tug Study (circa 1971)
complete design that not only included a Crew Module (CM), but also an Engine Module (EM).
The CM would have housed the astronauts and
all of their supplies, including food, oxygen, science
equipment, etc.
The EM would have contained the rocket engine,
propellant, tanks, electrical supply, etc.
• Exhaust Velocity (vEXH): The speed of the escaping
gas exiting a rocket engine
• Gross Weight (m0): The weight of the spacecraft fully
loaded including the propellant
• Inert Weight: The empty weight of the EM
• Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI): The rocket burn that
places a spacecraft into Low Lunar Orbit (LLO)
• MidCourse Correction (MCC): The rocket burn that
keeps the spacecraft on course
• Mission
Duration:
The
total
time
needed
to
• RL10 Engine: The name of the rocket engine used in
the Engine Module (EM)
• Standard Gravity (g0): The acceleration due to free
fall on Earth, equal to 9.80665 m/s2
•
): The force with respect to the
SP
amount of propellant used per unit of time
• TransLunar Injection (TLI): The rocket burn that places
a spacecraft on a trajectory to the Moon
Narrative
A long time ago, in a galaxy very near our own, there
once existed a wondrous vision of the future, where
For a more in-depth treatment of this high
school project by Joe Maness & Rich Holtzin
visit www.stemfortheclassroom.com.
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Illustration of the Boeing Space Tug.
Credit: Mark Wade
The CM and EM were to be attached together, and
the two would have become one, as they say. The
design was very much similar to the Apollo spacecraft
race of that era. Hence, a near twin to the Apollo
design.
It really would have been quite an awesome
machine, because the EM could have been able to
carry any type of payload, whether it was the CM
or satellites or whatever. Overall, the Boeing Space
Tug design was inspirational as well as functional.
Remarkable for the year 1971!
That being said, the spacecraft was never built!
However, we can still make something good out of
projects geared to this study posits our students working
on real space missions using a real spaceship model and
real numbers. In short, there are realworld implications
in our applied concepts and mathematics.
all the way to the Moon? You bet your last rocket!
www.RocketSTEM .org