The Moon Landing - Dream It, Design It

“Mom, did you have to hide from Velociraptors when you were a kid?”

My four-year-old daughter’s concept of time is straightforward. There are two categories: things that happened before she was born, and things that happened after. That dinosaurs roamed the Earth when her mother was a child is a given in her mind.

Actually I liked to ride a T-Rex when I was 8.

And yet although her questions make me laugh, sometimes I find myself marvelling at the passage of time too - for instance, has it really been fifty years since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon? Now that was before I was born, and it was long enough ago that barely 30% of Americans remember it.

Living near Washington, DC, I have often taken my kids to see the exhibits of the Apollo missions in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. “They went to the moon in that??” my oldest son exclaimed. They can’t believe how pitiful the technology looks - the old computers that couldn’t run any of the high res video games that are part of their daily lives, the enormous decks of controls that seem so clunky next to the smart phones their parents keep in their pockets. No wonder that fifty years ago in their minds could conceivably have included living dinosaurs.

But it’s the relics of the Apollo missions and the stories of the astronauts who flew them that inspire me to celebrate NASA’s incredible achievements of the past half century. If we made it to the moon in “that,” what amazing things will we do with the technologies we have now? And to what amazing places will the children of today venture?

So let’s take a moment to look up at the moon and stars and planets, our children’s hands held tightly in ours, and dream again of going to space. At Princess Awesome, we want to inspire the fourth generation born since the moon landing to go back there and beyond.

With our friends at Spoonflower and the Challenger Center, we are sponsoring a design contest honoring the vision that took people to the moon. Visits to Challenger Learning Centers all over the country give aspiring young astronauts and engineers hands-on experiences in a simulated Space Station and Mission Control. Designers at Spoonflower bring their creativity and extraordinary talents to themes and ideas in unique ways we haven’t found anywhere else.

If you’re a dreamer and a designer - if you’re inspired by the night sky, the moon, and the technology that helped us reach it - show us what that means to you. We can’t wait to bring one of your designs to life so that the girls who wear it this summer - celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing and dreaming of traveling to space - may one day find themselves there.

Photo taken at the Challenger Learning Center at Howard B. Owens Science Center