Postcard from... Space (Station)!
By Frida
Hello Classical Wisdom Kid readers,
It’s rainy and yucky out today, but I don’t want you to feel yucky, so I’m going to tell you a bright and happy story.
Recently, my family and I visited Houston to see my grandparents. While we were in town, we went to a ballgame, ate at Taco Bell and even went to see NASA.
(Taco Bell might not be that special for you, but we don’t have it where I live, in Argentina, so it’s a special treat for me!)
Now, you might not think NASA has anything to do with the ancient world, since it’s mostly just giant machinery and rockets and stuff, but NASA uses lots of ancient Greek and Roman names, as I found out!
So let’s start at the beginning. When we first arrived at NASA and walked through the metal doors, we saw a room full of huge machines. Next we took a shuttle to see a spaceship that actually took real astronauts into space…
BUT along the way, we saw some cute deer AND the famous Longhorn Cattle. They were eating their grass and staring at us. (I bet they were thinking, “Hmmm... I wonder if she’s going to write a postcard about us?”)
When we first saw the humongous shed out in the field, I thought it would be full of more cattle...we were in Texas, after all. But, lo and behold, inside the shed we found a real spaceship!
It was called the Saturn V, even though it never actually went to the planet Saturn. The name comes from the Roman god of wealth and agriculture. The Greek version is Cronos.
Anyway, it was part of the space program called Project Apollo. There were 14 Apollo missions, including Apollo 11, which landed humans on the moon for the first time ever.
Here’s me touching a REAL rock from the Moon!
The Apollo missions happened fifty years ago. But don’t worry, now they’ve started a new space program called Project Artemis.
Did you know that Apollo and Artemis are ancient Greek twins? Apollo is the god of the sun; Artemis is considered the moon goddess. They are the children of Zeus and Leto… they are very important in mythology… and also in Space!
So no matter where you go... even to space... there are lessons to be learned from the ancient world.
Until next week!
Frida
P.S. Owly didn’t come to the Space center, so her good friend Laika (the first dog in space) came instead… so she’ll be sending a video shortly showing you around…
