Gerald Kelleher wrote:
Newton's idea was the Earth attracts an apple, the moon attracts the
tides,the Earth attracts the moon and ultimately the Sun attracts the
Earth hence the 'universal theory of gravitation'. The upscale from the
fall of an apple to planetary motion was done via Kepler's assertion that
planetary orbital periods are loosely correlated to distance from the Sun
but within Newton's scheme there are a number of things going on, most
notably the attempt to connect small scale experimentation with astronomy
via the 'scientific method'.

To show just how eight Newton was you just need to look at Apollo 11.

The command module pilot gave this explanation to his five year old son so
it might be simple enough for you.

ttp://www.americaspace.com/2012/07/15/totally-different-moon-the-arrival-of-apollo-11/


Twenty-six hours into the mission, and almost 175,000 km from home, the
Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine of the command and service module
Columbia roared silently into the void for three seconds in what flight
controllers lauded as an “absolutely nominal” firing. In his autobiography,
Collins related that, for those few seconds, he was in active control.
Several months earlier, his five-year-old son had asked who was ‘driving’
Apollo 8 to the Moon: was it Mr Borman, the ship’s commander? No, Collins
replied, it was Sir Isaac Newton – or, at least, the influences of Sun,
Earth and Moon, which affected the spacecraft’s path just as the great
English scientist’s law of universal gravitation had helped predict three
centuries before.