JULES VERNE SPACE BOOK GALLERY
FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON
The above manuscript was displayed at the British Science Museum in London,
England. Photograph of display by Jerry Woodfill.
Compare the artist's rendering of Verne's lunar craft with the picture of
Apollo's command and service modules.
DISCUSSION
Consider the following amazing predictions by Verne in his novel which came
to pass:
The United States would launch the first manned vehicle to go to the
moon.
The shape and size of the vehicle would closely resemble the Apollo
command/service module spacecraft.
The number of men in the crew would be three.
A competition for the launch site would ensue between Florida
and Texas which actually was resolved in Congress in the 1960s with KSC as
the Flordia launch site and Houston, Texas as the Mission Control Center.
A telescope would be able to view the progress of the journey. When
Apollo 13
exploded, a telescope at Johnson Space Center witnessed the event which
happened more than 200,000 miles from Earth.
The Verne spacecraft would use
retro-rockets which became a technology assisting Neil Armstrong and his
crewmates in their journey to the Moon.
Verne predicted weightlessness
although his concept was slightly flawed in thinking it only was experienced
at the gravitational midpoint of the journey (when the Moon and Earth
gravity balanced).
The first men to journey to the Moon would return to Earth and splash
down in the Pacific Ocean
just where Apollo 11 splashed down in July of 1969 one hundred and six
years after the initial publishing of Jules Verne's FROM THE EARTH TO THE
MOON.
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Last modified: Wednesday, 30-Nov-04 09:15:00 PM CDT
Author: Jerry Woodfill / NASA, Mail Code ER7, jared.woodfill1@jsc.nasa.gov
Curator: Cecilia Breigh, NASA JSC ER7
Responsible Official: Andre Sylvester, NASA JSC ER7
Automation, Robotics and Simulation Division, Walter W. Guy,
Chief.
