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Space Exploration · Grades 1-12

Eight real disciplines.
One sky. Twelve years.

Spaceflight, taught by someone who has built the systems. Personally, every class, one student at a time.

Request an assessment See the twelve-year plan
Grades 1-4 Grades 5-8 Grades 9-12
8
aerospace fields, opened in every stage, not astronomy alone
1:1
live on Zoom, taught personally by a Master’s-qualified aerospace engineer
12
years, three stages, one continuous plan from Grade 1 to Grade 12
15
students in the practice, in total. Never a group. Never a stand-in.

01 The thing that gets lost

Somewhere around fourth grade, most children stop asking the questions.

Not because they stopped wondering. Because they worked out that a question with no answer on the worksheet is a question that costs them marks.

The child who wanted to know why the Moon follows the car is the same child who, six years later, will be told that logarithms are on the syllabus. In between, nothing connected the two. School science is arranged by subject because it has to be. Curiosity is not arranged at all.

Space exploration is the most efficient teaching material I have, and it is not because children like rockets. It is because a real mission asks real questions and will not accept an answer that is physically impossible. A student working out whether a launcher reaches orbit is doing ratio, logarithms, conservation of momentum and order-of-magnitude estimation. They are not thinking about any of those things. They are thinking about whether it gets there.

The students I take are rarely behind. They are usually ahead, and unchallenged. Abhishek Dabas · MSc Astronautics and Space Engineering

02 Where it all points

Everything on this page is aimed at a real place.

Jezero Crater was a lake. A one-tonne machine has been driving across its floor since February 2021, drilling cores and sealing them in metal tubes. Whether those tubes ever reach Earth, and by what architecture at what cost, is still genuinely unsettled, and is being argued over this year. That is not a gap in the story. That is the story: the people who will settle it are in school somewhere right now.

Perseverance Jezero Crater, Mars Landed 18 February 2021 Sample tubes sealed and cached

03 The eight fields

Space is not one subject. It is eight, and your child meets all of them every year.

Astronomy is what most programmes mean by “space”. It is one of eight here. Choose a stage and the whole map redraws itself at that depth.

Stage One · Wonder

The first stage is about attention, not arithmetic. A child learns the real names of things in the sky, handles the same questions a scientist handles, and answers them with paper, string, water and a flashlight. Every one of the eight fields appears here in a form a seven-year-old can hold in their hands, so that the words astrophysics and astronautics stop being intimidating and start being interesting. It runs alongside NGSS elementary science rather than repeating it.

8fields, every year
1:1live on Zoom
1build project per term

Stage Two · Method

The middle stage converts wonder into method. Arithmetic, ratio and early algebra stop being schoolwork and become instruments: a student calculates rather than guesses, plots rather than describes, and learns that a number without a unit and an uncertainty is not yet an answer. It runs ahead of NGSS middle-school science and sets up high-school physics, so that by 8th grade a student can say which of the eight fields they want more of, and why.

8fields, in rotation
1:1live on Zoom
2investigations per term

Stage Three · Mastery

The final stage is taught at a level a first-year college student would recognise, and maps cleanly onto AP Physics C, AP Calculus BC and IB HL. The purpose is a decision: by graduation a student has worked inside all eight fields, knows what each major and each job actually look like, and chooses a direction because they have tried it rather than because it sounded good.

8fields, at depth
1:1live on Zoom
1capstone design project

Astronomy

Learning the sky by heart
  • Day, night and the seasons
  • Moon phases from observation
  • The eight planets to scale
  • Constellations and their stories
  • A first look through a telescope

Astrophysics

Why things in space shine and fall
  • Gravity: drops, ramps, pendulums
  • Hot and cool stars by colour
  • Light, shadow and distance
  • Why the Sun is not a fire

Astrochemistry

What space is actually made of
  • Solids, liquids and gases, and where each one is in space
  • Inside a rock from space
  • Ice, dust and the tails of comets
  • Colour tells you the ingredient

Astrobiology

Could anything live out there?
  • What every living thing needs
  • The most extreme places on Earth
  • Water worlds: Europa and Enceladus
  • Design a creature that fits its planet

Aeronautics

Why anything stays up
  • Air is a real substance
  • Paper airplane trials
  • Parachutes, kites and gliders
  • What a wing is shaped like, and why

Astronautics

Getting off the ground
  • Balloon and water-bottle rockets
  • Push, and be pushed back
  • What astronauts wear, eat and breathe
  • A launch day at Kennedy Space Center

Aerospace

Building the machine
  • Naming the parts of a rocket
  • Light versus strong materials
  • Build it, fly it, measure it, fix it
  • Draw and label your own spacecraft
  • Apollo 13: making a square filter fit a round hole

Aviation

Flying, for real
  • Airports, airliners and cargo
  • Who sits in the cockpit, and why
  • Reading a simple flight map
  • Tracking a real flight, and guessing when it lands
  • Helicopters, drones and gliders

Why all eight, every year

These eight fields deliberately overlap. Astrophysics sits inside astronomy, aeronautics and astronautics sit inside aerospace. A child who only ever meets space as astronomy never finds out that they are, in fact, a propulsion engineer. So every field is opened in every stage, and reopened deeper in the next.

04 Three stages, twelve years

One plan that starts in first grade and ends with a college shortlist.

The same eight fields, three times, each time at a depth the previous stage made possible. Here is what each one actually is.

Grades 1-4

Wonder

Look, ask, build, and name what is up there.

Attention, not arithmetic. Paper, string, water and a flashlight. Runs alongside NGSS elementary science rather than repeating it.

A term is one question held open for twelve weeks. The child draws it, argues with it, builds something that tests it, and writes down what happened in their own words. Nothing is memorised, because nothing needs to be memorised yet. What is being protected here is the willingness to attempt something before you know whether it will work.

What a child is practising

  • Keeping an observation journal in their own words
  • Saying “I don’t know yet”, then finding out
  • Measuring, comparing and drawing to scale
  • Turning a curiosity into a testable question
  • Finishing a build that failed the first time

At the end of a termAn object that flew, and a journal that says in the child’s own words why it did.

Grades 5-8

Method

Measure it, model it, and test the idea.

Ratio and early algebra become instruments. A number without a unit and an uncertainty is not yet an answer. Runs ahead of NGSS middle-school science.

This is the stage where mathematics stops being a separate subject. Ratio arrives because a rocket forces it, graphs arrive because a wing does, and the question of what it is all for stops being asked. Two of the eight fields are foregrounded each term; the other six turn up inside the build. By 8th grade a student can name the field they want more of, and defend the choice.

What a student is practising

  • Units, estimation and sanity-checking a number
  • Uncertainty: how wrong could this be?
  • Plotting data and reading a gradient
  • Writing a short, honest scientific report
  • Defending a conclusion when it is questioned

At the end of a termA plotted result, an uncertainty beside it, and an argument the student can hold under questioning.

Grades 9-12

Mastery

Real physics, real design, a decision made on evidence.

Taught at a level a first-year college student would recognise. Maps cleanly onto AP Physics C, AP Calculus BC and IB HL.

The capstone is not a school project. It is a design carried to stated requirements and then reviewed the way a design review actually runs, with the weak parts named out loud and fixed rather than presented around. Every written note is scored on the same five things, so twelve years read as a trajectory rather than a pile of grades.

What a student leaves with

  • A capstone: a full mission or airframe design
  • A portfolio of reports, models and real data
  • Majors: aerospace, mechanical, EE, physics
  • Entry routes: NASA OSTEM, AFROTC, service academies
  • A college shortlist chosen on evidence

At the endA portfolio, a shortlist, and a direction chosen because they have tried it rather than because it sounded good.

Why this starts in elementary school

Nobody is hired by NASA, SpaceX or Lockheed Martin for what they did in fourth grade. They are hired for what they were still willing to attempt in twelfth. Stage One protects that willingness while it is cheap to protect, years before the mathematics gets hard enough to scare anyone off.

Built early

Curiosity, measurement, and the habit of finishing.

Built by 8th grade

Real algebra, real data, and a field they have chosen.

Built by 12th grade

A capstone, a portfolio, and a college shortlist.

05 How it is taught

How much fuel does a rocket need?

One question, answered three times. This is not a syllabus. It is what the same idea looks like at three different ages, and the clearest way to show you how your child would be taught rather than tell you.

Grades 1 to 4

It is not about how heavy it is. It is about how much of it is fuel.

We draw a rocket as a tall box and colour in the part that is fuel. On a real launcher almost the whole drawing gets coloured in, and the crew and the cargo are a sliver at the very top.

That picture surprises children, and the surprise is the hook. It also quietly teaches the idea of a fraction of a whole before anybody has used the word.

Grades 5 to 8

If the rocket is nine tenths fuel, what is left for everything else?

Now we put numbers on the picture. Suppose nine tenths of the liftoff mass is propellant: mp = 0.9 m0, so md = 0.1 m0.

Tanks, engines, structure, guidance and the payload all have to fit inside that tenth. The student works out for themselves why a rocket that carries four tonnes has to weigh hundreds. This is ratio and proportion work. It is on the syllabus. It does not feel like it.

Grades 9 to 12

Derive the equation, then argue with it.

Conservation of momentum applied to a vehicle throwing mass out of the back gives Tsiolkovsky’s result. Reaching low Earth orbit needs roughly 9.4 km/s once gravity and drag losses are included; a good kerosene and liquid-oxygen engine gives about 3.4 km/s of exhaust velocity.

Then the argument starts. The logarithm is brutal: to double your Δv you must square your mass ratio. That single observation is why staging exists, why single-stage-to-orbit is so hard, and why every gram of dry mass is fought over.

Argue with it yourself.

Every launch vehicle ever flown lives inside this one equation. Move either slider and watch what it will and will not allow.

Δv = ve ln m0mf

Standard first-order values used for launch-vehicle estimation. An exhaust velocity of 3.4 km/s corresponds to a vacuum specific impulse of roughly 347 seconds.

15.9 : 1MASS RATIO m0/mf
93.7%PROPELLANT, BY MASS
6.3 tEVERYTHING ELSE, PER 100 t ON THE PAD

06 What is actually made

Every term ends in something built, measured or designed.

Not a certificate. Not a slideshow. An object or a document, reviewed together, line by line, and kept.

Grades 1-4 · one build per term

Things that fly, and a journal that says why

  • Water-bottle and balloon rockets, flown and measured
  • Parachutes, kites and gliders, trialled against each other
  • The eight planets laid out to scale
  • A labelled spacecraft of their own design
  • An observation journal, in their own words
Grades 5-8 · two investigations per term

Data, plotted, with the uncertainty stated

  • Glider and wind-tunnel test campaigns
  • A mission profile, launch to landing
  • First CAD models, sketched then built
  • Simulator and kit-build projects, graded
  • One named failure a term, read from the accident report
  • A short, honest scientific report, and a defence of it
Grades 9-12 · one capstone

A design a university would recognise

  • A full mission or airframe design, to requirements
  • Photometry and orbit work against the Gaia, JWST and MAST archives
  • Structures, loads and finite-element studies
  • A portfolio: reports, models, designs, real data
  • Critiques of primary literature, written up

07 The timing

The 8th-grade decision nobody announces.

Whether a student reaches AP Physics C and AP Calculus BC by senior year is decided by the mathematics track they are placed on in middle school, a placement that quietly shapes which colleges, and therefore which employers, stay reachable. Stage Two makes a student ready for the harder track.

Open now

While they are still in middle school

The American Rocketry Challenge, from Grade 6. Civil Air Patrol, from age 12. FIRST. Science fair.

Open at 16

The first doors that check a record

NASA OSTEM internships. Community-college dual enrolment. A student pilot certificate.

Open at 18

The doors that decide a career

AFROTC. The service academies. University research labs.

08 Where this leads

Eight fields, and the seats at the end of them.

By graduation a student has worked inside all eight, knows what each major and each job actually looks like, and chooses a direction because they have tried it, not because it sounded good.

Majors

What they apply to

Aerospace, mechanical, electrical engineering, physics.

Schools

Where those majors live

Purdue. Georgia Tech. MIT. Michigan.

Entry routes

Ways in that start before college

NASA OSTEM. AFROTC. The service academies.

Jobs

What the work is called

Mission design. Flight test. Air traffic control. Operations.

Who hires out of these eight fields, and who is allowed to apply

Most of this work is ITAR-controlled and much of it needs a clearance, which means it is reserved for U.S. persons: citizens and lawful permanent residents. American students are not competing with the whole world for these seats. They compete with each other, mostly on evidence of what they have already built.

Civil space

NASA centers, JPL, APL, the national labs.

Commercial space

SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Sierra Space.

Defense and aviation

Lockheed Martin, Northrop, Boeing, Anduril, FAA.

NASAJPLSpaceXBlue Origin Rocket LabSierra SpaceLockheed Martin Northrop GrummanBoeingAndurilFAA

09 How it runs

Weekly, one to one, on your time zone, and written down afterwards.

Weekly, one to one

Live on Zoom, taught personally every session by a Master’s-qualified aerospace engineer. Never a group. Never a stand-in tutor.

On U.S. time, recorded

Scheduled to Eastern, Central, Mountain or Pacific, after school or at weekends. Every class is recorded, with a written note on progress after each one.

Made, not just heard

Each term ends in something built, measured or designed, and reviewed together, line by line.

Abhishek Dabas, who teaches every Insight Bay class personally

Taught by

“The students I take are rarely behind. They are usually ahead, and unchallenged.”

  • Abhishek Dabas, MSc Astronautics and Space Engineering
  • Teaching one to one since 2015; every class taught personally
  • A deliberately small practice, by design
  • Mathematics, physics, space exploration, flight theory, Six Sigma and project management, Kindergarten through Grade 12
Read about the practice

10 Before you ask

The questions families actually ask.

Is this an astronomy club?

No. Astronomy is one of eight fields, and it is opened alongside astrophysics, astrochemistry, astrobiology, aeronautics, astronautics, aerospace engineering and aviation in every single stage.

The reason is blunt: a child who only ever meets space as astronomy never finds out that they are, in fact, a propulsion engineer.

My child is seven. Isn’t this too early?

Stage One is about attention, not arithmetic. It is answered with paper, string, water and a flashlight, and it runs alongside school science rather than adding a second load on top of it.

Nobody is hired for what they did in fourth grade. They are hired for what they were still willing to attempt in twelfth. Stage One protects that willingness while it is still cheap to protect.

Does this replace school science, or compete with it?

Neither, and the alignment is deliberate at each stage. Stage One runs alongside NGSS elementary science. Stage Two runs ahead of NGSS middle-school science and sets up high-school physics. Stage Three maps cleanly onto AP Physics C, AP Calculus BC and IB HL.

Why one to one rather than a small group?

Because the plan is written for one child, after watching them work, and revised every term. In a group the pace is set by the median student, and the child who is ahead and unchallenged, which is most of the children who come here, stays that way.

The practice is deliberately small. Every class is taught personally, never by a stand-in tutor.

Why space exploration rather than coding?

Coding is a good thing to learn, and a poor thing to learn first. A program returns an answer whether or not the physics behind it is right. A real mission does not: it asks real questions and will not accept an answer that is physically impossible.

A student working out whether a launcher reaches orbit is doing ratio, logarithms, conservation of momentum and order-of-magnitude estimation, and is not thinking about any of them. That is the whole argument.

What does our family receive after each class?

A recording of the session, and a written note on progress. Each term ends in something built, measured or designed, and reviewed together, line by line. The written record is the point: it is what lets you see the reasoning improve rather than take my word for it.

Is my child expected to become an engineer?

No. The purpose of Stage Three is a decision, and “not this” is a perfectly good outcome, arrived at by having actually done the work, at seventeen, rather than by discovering it in a second-year college lab.

The mathematics, the measurement and the habit of finishing transfer to everything else regardless.

How does a family begin?

With a seventy-five minute assessment: forty-five minutes with your child working real problems, and thirty with you.

Within forty-eight hours you receive a written assessment of your child’s reasoning: what they understand, what they only appear to understand, and what I would do about it. Yours to keep, whatever you decide.

How every family begins

Begin with an assessment.

Seventy-five minutes: forty-five with your child, working real problems, and thirty with you. Within forty-eight hours you receive a written assessment of your child’s reasoning: what they understand, what they only appear to understand, and what I would do about it. Yours to keep, whatever you decide.

Request an assessment Programmes and fees
Grades 1-4 Wonder

Look, ask, build, and name what is up there. Attention, not arithmetic, answered with paper, string, water and a flashlight.

Grades 5-8 Method

Measure it, model it, test the idea. The stage where a number without a unit and an uncertainty stops counting as an answer.

Grades 9-12 Mastery

Real physics, real design, a decision made on evidence. A capstone, a portfolio, and a direction chosen because they have tried it.

Insight Bay · Mathematics · Physics · Space Exploration