The Apollo program and Jules Verne
In 1869, he imagined a mission to the moon that prefigured the flight of Apollo 9 one century later. "Our space vehicle," Frank Borman, the astronaut, wrote to Verne's grandson, was launched from Florida, like [Verne's]; it had the same weight and the same height, and it splashed down in the Pacific a mere two and a half miles from the point mentioned in the novel."
Text from the Introduction to Jule's Verne's Paris in the Twentieth Century (Random House, 1996). Photo of Apollo 9 from NASA's APOD website.
It's a little less prescient when you consider that Verne had the spacecraft shot from a giant gun, the physics of which would be impossible and with explosive G-force that would kill the crew.
ReplyDeletehey
ReplyDeletedid you see this:
A giant squid was caught in an underwater robots Petrobras(Brazil Oil) . The cameras filmed the creature's incredible effort to break away from the apparatus.
Is it a Jules Verne´s story?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5QtxROedbM&feature=player_embedded
On a similar note, did you ever hear about this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/discus/messages/5671/1509.html?976305748
blitherypoop, I have heard of that foreshadowing before, but haven't read the relevant book(s). The Martin Gardner analysis sounds interesting; I've added it on to my list for future reading.
ReplyDeleteTx.
interesting clip, Binho, although it's difficult to judge size from the video with not much reference material within the camera's view. I'm glad it got away.
ReplyDeleteI think you mean Apollo 8. Which was the first manned orbit of the moon, which is much like Verne's books
ReplyDeleteApollo 9 was an earth orbital test of the lunar lander
Actually I'm nearly finished writing a research paper on the effects of science fiction on military and government technology.
ReplyDeleteBJN, while this concept is totally incompatible with human anatomy, it has in fact shown potential with cargo payloads. Scientist John Hunter with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had great success with the testing of such technologies in the 90s; the US Government even funded (for a time) this project, known as the Super High Altitude Research Project (SHARP).
In the 1960s, Gerald Bull of McGill University ran a similar, if smaller, device known as the High Altitude Research Product (HARP) or the Barbados Gun.
Both devices had their successes, although both were lost to withdrawal of government funding. Each was, in their respective times, known as the Jules Verne Gun.
re 9 and 8 - I transcribed the citation directly from the source book. I've modified the title a bit to make it less confusing.
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