Lost on the moon, what would you do?

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You are in a space crew originally scheduled to rendezvous with a mother ship on the lighted surface of the moon. Mechanical difficulties, however, have forced your ship to crash-land at a spot some 200 miles from the rendezvous point. The rough landing damaged much of the equipment aboard. Since survival depends on reaching the mother ship, the most critical items available must be chosen for the 200 mile trip. Below are listed 15 items left intact after landing. Your task is to rank them in terms of their importance to your crew in it's attempt to reach the rendezvous point. Place number 1 by the most important item; number 2 by the second most important, and so on through number 15, the least important.

~Box of matches
~Food concentrate
~50 feet of nylon rope
~Parachute silk
~Portable heating unit
~Two .45 caliber pistols
~One case dehydrated milk
~Two 100-pound tanks of oxygen
~Stellar map(moon's constellation)
~Life raft
~Magnetic compass
~5 gallons of water
~Singal flares
~First-aid kit containing injection needles
~Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter

After you have numbered them you can only take the first 10 items with you. Now tell what you would do with them and why.

 

1: 2 100lb tanks of oxygen (to breathe)
2: 5 gallons of water (to stay alive during trip)
3: portable heating unit (to keep from freezing)
4: food concentrate (food to stay alive)
5: Life Raft (shelter from sun)
6: Stellar Map (to find mother ship)
7: Magnetic Compass (to help use map and find mother ship)
8: FM Transmitter (to communicate w/mother ship)
9: Parachute silk (for shelter, and maybe to patch suits, or to use to carry items)
10: 50' nylon rope (to help climb or descend if needed and to secure items)

The things I don't take:

11: first aid kit (it was close, but I'm trusting to luck on this)
12: signal flares (another close one, but I have the map and transmitter - so I probably won;t need them)
13: dehydrated milk (don't want to waste water)
14: pistols...can't imagine why I'd need them....
15: matches (no oxygen on moon)

How did I do?

 

1. Oxygen Tanks
2. Food concentrate
3. Portable Heating Unit
4. Water
5. Solar Powered FM reciever-transmitter
6. First Aid Kit
7. One case dhydrated milk.
8. Map.
9. 50 feet of nylon rope.
10.Parachute silk

The rest of the stuff is pretty much useless.

11. Life Raft.
12. Signal Flares.
13. Box of matches
14. Magnetic compass
15. Two .45 caliber pistols.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that the water or food will do you much good. I don't think there's any way of getting it to your mouth. In short (if this is true) you'll die of dehydration before you hit the fifty mile mark due to having to lug all the equipment along and not being able to get a drink.

Or you could just wait a couple hours and use the transmitter to reschedule and reposition the rendezvous...

 

You might not die of lugging stuff around cos it wouldn't weigh (as) much on the moon- it might be a bit inconvenient though...

[This message has been edited by Christopher_Lee (edited April 08, 2002).]

 

I wondered about the compass - I couldn't remember if a magnetic one would work on moon or not...Having never been there, I thought it might be useful!

As for drinking and eating, I brought the raft to act as a shelter and for carrying all the stuff. You could probably flip it over, turn on the heater to warm the inside, open your spacesuit up and eat and drink away!



[This message has been edited by Sir Belisarius (edited April 08, 2002).]

 

Hmm.. I think I would still go for some Grolsch beer, good metal music and some nice girls

 

Sir Bel - why would you be able to open your spacesuis under the life raft?

I agree with Headbanger though, I would even go further and suggest that a better use of time would be for everyone to join him and me down my student union, and we can hypothesis about such questions in a warm, breathable (relatively) atmosphere, with no use of a pair of .45 pistols...

[This message has been edited by Christopher_Lee (edited April 08, 2002).]

 

I would stay put and use the Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter to call the mothership and tell our position Stellar map

Then the Crew and I would find a near mountain and sit in the life raft. Use the parachute silk to tie up the Oxygen tanks to the raft and experiment with the oxygen-mathces-flare-pistols-heating unit- to ignite the oxygen to make an engine and river raft up and down the mountain, shooting up flares and drugging ourself with the first aid tools

That was 10...

 

I second NobleAngel's idea. But I'd like to trade my guns for a lightsaber .

 

1-Two 100-pound tanks of oxygen - rather a no brainer
2-Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter - for contacting the mother ship
3-Stellar map(moon's constellation) - for directions
4-Portable heating unit - to stay warm, heat food
5-5 gallons of water - drinking, using on food
6-Food concentrate - eating
7-50 feet of nylon rope - moving over rough ground
8-Parachute silk - carrying supplies
9-First-aid kit containing injection needles - injecting food with water to prevent boiloff
10- Life raft - shade from sun and patching material for suit. Rubber is air tight so if your space suit is ripped on rocks etc. use the raft to make patches. Cut raft with tools from first aid kit and melt patches in place with heating unit.

These are the 'don't take items'

11- One case dehydrated milk - don't waste water
12-Magnetic compass - won't work on Moon
13-Two .45 caliber pistols - no air for gunpowder to work
14-Singal flares - no air
15-Box of matches - no air



[This message has been edited by Voltric (edited April 09, 2002).]

 

All good ideas so far. Some of you have some really weird ways of thinking.

Flipping over a life raft will not work to make a air tight place to open your space suit.

Space suit's are like the ones we have today.

I'm not sure about the compass thing. I'll look but if any one can find some relibable info about this please post it here.

Theirs a number of ways to use all of these. You've only touched the iceburg as far as I know.

I'll tell you all Friday what every thing can be used as and who was the most creative, reallistic ect.

Till Friday.

 

The top of the iceberg? there are 15! posibilities. Which means I have 1/1307674368000 chance of hitting jackpot. Oh well

Never tell me the odds

I am sure the Raft vehicle is the fastest hunk of junk on the moon. It can make the mothership run in less than 12 minutes, just in case the mothership doesn't notice the crash and my FM-thingie gets confiscated by the Martians who shot down my Spaceshuttle

[This message has been edited by ArchAngel (edited April 08, 2002).]

 

*taps NobleAngel's shoulder
"Sir, Artoo says that the chances of survival on the moon are 1,307,674,368,000 to 1. Of course he has been known to be wrong from time to time...oh dear."


As for reliable sources, what more do you want then BTA's word .

 

BigB. I am gonna watch SW now, In dispair that SP-chat "java version" doesn't work. Uncle BTA, this J2 unit has a bad motivator.

As for reliable sources? Well BTA is Master in my Own Mind

 

1: Two 100-pound tanks of oxygen (doh?)
2: 5 gallons of water
3: Stellar map
4: Solar-powered FM reciever-transmitter
5: Food concentrate
6: Portable heating unit
7: 50' nylon rope
8: Life Raft
9: First Aid Kit
10: Parachute silk

Don't ask me why, because I don't know myself

 

I just couldnt help but to butt in.

How did you find the odds to be 1/1307784368000??

I ment that their were many different posabilties about how to use each item. I've thought of a few plus theirs what ever way any one else thinks of.

 

There are 15 items the can be placed in the first spot. Fourteen for the second one, thirteen for the third spot and so forth. So basically it's just 15!. What I'd assume they are showing is that this a 1 in 1 307 674 368 000 chance in getting the right order of importance. Of course this should be 1 in 1 307 674 367 999...

There is also the fact that the only really important spots are the are the first 10 so what you would really need to be doing is a permutation such as 15P10 and then there are approximately 10 897 286 400 different ways of getting those first 10 right.

These odds have nothing to do with surviving on the moon though, just the chance of guessing the correct order and by now I'd be willing to bet you are all thinking enough with the math lessons already... I wonder what the odds of that are?

Hmm, on second thought, those odds are the odds of randomly guessing the order. No educated guesses allowed.


[This message has been edited by Avarahtar (edited April 09, 2002).]