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This site was a hobby for Rick Morris. He grew up watching the space program from its modest, and sometimes embarassing, beginnings up through the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs.
When he first got on the internet, he thought there would be a lot of really good sites about the space program and astronomy in general. He did find a lot of astronomy and space program sites, but none of them really offered what he was after.
At the time, he was volunteering at the planetarium of the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, and in addition to not being able to find a site that offered what he was looking for, he almost couldn't find any sites that were geared specifically towards kids or even beginners in general, regardless of age. The sites he found seemed to have either too little information or way more than he wanted, so he decided to make his own.
What he wanted to have was a site that anyone could come to, find what they were looking for and get a general understanding of the subject in fifteen minutes or less (he admitted to having a short attention span).
The site was first launched in the Spring of 1996, when the internet was about a tenth of the size that it is now. He was lucky enough to get a good listing on Yahoo! and, surprisingly enough, people started visiting the site. He would add things occasionally, correct errors when they were pointed out and answer the surprising number of emails that he got from teachers, students and kids of all ages about how useful they found the site. Apparently he had found a niche.
The version that you are looking at now was intially published in the fall of 2003.
Rick became ill in the fall of 2007 and knowing he couldn't maintain the site to his satisfaction, removed Astronomy for Kids from the internet. As a tribute to him, we have restored AFK to its rightful place. We won't be able to answer any questions or do your homework for you, but in memory of Rick, we hope you find the site useful.
If you would like some information about how this site was put together, or you just are the curious type, you can get more geek information than you probably wanted to know at the Technical Information page.
If you have way too much time on your hands, or need to know about the author for your homework assignment, you can find out all that boring stuff on the site author page.