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.