I think this is just another time where the Greeks got it wrong and makes it hard to believe what they say. We orbit the sun, and the moon orbits the Earth. That's what makes them rise and set, not someone riding on a chariot. I wish the Greeks could have had a telescope maybe we'd get better myths, or know more about space than we do now. But this does explain why NASA used Apollo to name all their early space-craft after. My favorite Apollo mission is Apollo 13. Partly because it's the first I learned about (thank you OLD GUY!!!) and partly because they had to fix the machines and computers while they were in space.
4 comments:
All of the early spaceflight programs were named after Greek gods. There was the Mercury program which had one astronaut in the capsule. Mercury was focused on getting into space. There was the Gemini program, which had two astronauts (look up Gemini in wikipedia and see why). It was focused on orbitting the earth. Apollo program had three astronauts and was for going to the moon.
There is a great series about the space program called "From the Earth to the Moon" that you might want to watch. There are five dvds, each with really interesting things on them. They have a lot about engineering in them.
Speaking of things traveling around the earth, Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy) in the 2nd century AD "proved" that the earth was at or near the very center of the universe (if you first believe that all the stars are glued to the inside of a huge sphere).
He was one of the greatest astronomers of his time and was the first person to calculate a useable formula for how the planets orbited the earth.
Of course, the planets don't actually orbit the earth - they orbit the sun. So Ptolemy's map looked a little weird. According to him, the planets didn't just go in a circle; they did loops in the sky.
Today, that idea seems funny. How could he possibly have believed that the planets could do loops?
But - before we laugh at Ptolemy's silly ideas, maybe we should remember that we don't know it all yet. It seems very likely that we have ideas (today!) about the universe that will seem just as silly sometime in the future.
All it takes is someone like Sir Isaac Newton to come up with another crazy idea like gravity (that explains why planets orbit) to set us on the right track.
What do you think?
Grandma- I got to see a bunch of mechanical diagrams of all the different spacecrafts, on google. I thought maybe we could look at the plans for some of them with Old Guy and he could explain what the parts are used for. Also he could tell me how he'd make it different.
You know when I went to OMSI there was a return capsal from one of the missions. When you come down to Portland next time...maybe we could talk Dad into taking us all to OMSI to look at cool science stuff together.
Hey BOB!!!
So I didn't even know that guy existed! I'm going to have to look up more about him. I think his ideas are really crazy. Maybe it was all that crummy ancient Greek beer. Then again, the idea that he figured this all out by using math is INCREDIBLE! Thanks for tip, and I'll learn more about him soon!
Post a Comment