Space is not the final frontier, just for the record. Space is the next frontier that leads to many other frontiers, but to call it the final frontier is a little a little short-sighted. Granted, that is just a quote from a media franchise, but a lot of people take it to heart and look out into the starry night as though it all ends just past the horizon. In fact, it is just the beginning and who and what we are now is just the tip of the iceberg. It is here on this planet where he have to conquer some pretty big hurdles to get to that next frontier.
I work teaching natural sciences to kids in the 3rd and 4th grade. We have a garden at the school and a few weeks ago we were talking about the changing seasons and why it happens. I explained to them that the weather and the temperature change because the northern hemisphere is tilting away from the sun as the earth travels around the sun.
One child, a very gifted child, told me that he heard the earth might be flat. Think about that for a moment. There is an eight year old out there who believes that the earth is flat. Not only children, but adults as well who believe that the earth is flat. There are people out there going about their daily lives believing that we are on a giant flat disk. Not only that, these people are voting and raising children.
This made me wonder how many other people out there think the world is flat and why. How could someone in 2017 think that the world is flat?
We sat with this child and talked about how I could convince him that the world is round. We decided that we are going to launch a high altitude balloon with a camera so that he can see for himself.
When we think about how powerful that statement is, we can see where these problems might be coming from. These kids need to see for themselves. Maybe not go into space, although that could one day be the goal, but to see for themselves and to do the proverbial math. Some of them believe the earth is round because the earth is round and that is what they have been told. Some of them don't care and don't really think about it. Some of these kids think the earth is flat.
We are going to show them and we are going to do the proverbial math.
We are launching 3 different high altitude balloons in the month of May; The Unity, The Accord, and The Winnie Mae will go to nearly 180,000 feet; high enough to see the curvature of the earth and come down.
Over the course of the next few months, we are going to talk about how we are going to do it, but first we wanted to talk about the why. We need to talk about all the things that are going to go into these flights and the future.
