EHC Mission I
Author: TeacherGaming
Date: September 15, 2015
Introduction
This lesson will focus on introducing the students to the basic game concepts and flight mechanics. Playing
the mission, they will learn to control vessels in KerbalEdu during flight, take off and landing. They will do
this by using historic planes.
The mission is relatively self-sustaining: students will receive on-screen instructions and follow them to
progress through the mission.
This lesson plan will walk you through the stages the students will go through during the mission, pointing
out teachable moments where they arise. It is also a good idea to play through the mission yourself to
know what to expect when students get their hands on it.
Age of Student(s)
7yo. - 10yo.
Objectives
Game concepts:
Steering & orientation
Take off & landing on runway
Flying in atmosphere
Time warp
Force arrows
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Physics concepts:
Lift & drag
Free body diagrams (Force Arrows)
Historic concepts:
NF-104A (astronaut training for X-15)
X-15 (first spaceplane)
Dassault Mirage III C
Timeline
The mission is split into two parts, each can take 5-10 minutes to complete. As one of the game
concepts students will learn is time warping, different students may finish at different times.
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Learning Activities
Ascending to space & controls
The first few minutes are spent on the carrier plane Boeing B-52. The X-15 replica players are
piloting will stay on autopilot until they reach space.
When they reach space, they will go through basic controls W, A, S, D, Q & E, testing to see what
each control does in space. Once they are done, they will have a few minutes to test the controls on
their own before they reach atmosphere again and start their re-entry.
Warping time Space flights are long projects, transfers in orbit taking anything between minutes to
weeks. To help with this, your pilots can warp time to skip over the waiting parts. Time warp can be
controlled with , [comma] and . [dot] keys. You can also use the arrow keys in the top left corner of
the screen. Be careful, when warping: when orbiting you can time warp up to x100 000 times faster.
If you're students get anxious over having to wait, you can teach them how to warp time.
Re-entry and landing
During the re-entry, students will once again follow on screen instructions to land their plane. They
will first have to keep a steady heading towards the space center and once they get closer detach
extra parts and lower landing gears for touchdown.
Gliding to the space center takes time, remind them that they can fastforward (see above) if they
get anxious. If you want to use the extra time, you can have a discussion about lift and why their
heavy plane can glide so far.
Before they land, students have the option of deploying their parachutes rather than trying to land
the plane themselves.
Once landed, students will follow on-screen instruction to continue to the next part of the mission.
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Mission Sputnik
The latter part of the mission tasks the students with investigating an strange, unknown object. The
activity starts with students at the space center where they choose their planes for the mission.
They can choose from two different planes:
Lockheed NF-104A
Dassault Mirage III C
If you want to include a historical aspect in the lesson, ask the students to research both planes
before making their choice.
Flight to Sputnik
Once the students have decided on their plane of choice they take off from the runway and head
towards a close-by island. Take off is relatively simple and the students have on-screen instructions
to guide them. You can give some pointers to the students, if they struggle:
They don't have to hold down shift to accelerate.
Tell them to wait until the plane has gathered enough speed before stating to pull up by
pressing S.
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Once they are airborne, they need to find a target marker on their navball. Navball is the main
navigation unit on the plane and an important instrument to master. Understanding how
controls work relative to the navball is essential. This is a good place to start!
Lift and forces affecting the plane The flight to the target takes a while. You can ask the
students to activate their Force Arrows to display the forces acting on the plane if you want to
take the chance to talk about lift.
Next Steps
When students get close enough to the unidentified object, their sensors decrypt the message
it's broadcasting. Students will see an info package on Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite.
This is the last step in the mission and you can continue the discussion in the classroom about
Sputnik and how it started the space race.
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