Dreams of Space: Before Apollo (Moon Flight Atlas)
apollo nasa Introduction In books and movies our early ideas about how humans could travel in space included being shot to the Moon in a large cannon shell In real life Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky began developing ideas on how rockets could be launched into space in the late 1800s while from 1926 to 1941 American scientist Robert Goddard built a series of successful rockets Later German scientist Wernher von Braun spearheaded much of the U S space effort Here you can find out how the work of these and other space pioneers paved the way for the Apollo Moon landings 2
Moon Flight Atlas Contents Early ideas 4 Dreams of space Science at work 6 Rocket pioneers Deadly missile 8 First rocket to space Steps to space 10 From ideas to reality Start of the space race 12 Challenge in space High frontier 14 Leaving our world Designing for space 16 Wings or capsule 18 20 Testing for Apollo 22 Robot explorers 24 26 28 30 32 Bigger and bigger Gemini two-seat spacecraft Target Moon Studying the Moon Moon flight facts Ready for takeoff Mapping the Moon Timeline Glossary Webfinder Index About the author
Early ideas Dreams of space Seeing the Moon has always inspired people to want to go there even if they had unrealistic ideas of how to get there Author Jules Verne’s early Moon travelers were described as floating without gravity Verne and Georges Méliès above right both used a large cannon shell to carry their astronauts How could we travel without rockets In the 1800s science fiction writer Jules Verne described a super-powerful cannon that shot his explorers into space It was not a very good idea Without any steering or landing gear such a trip would end in a crash landing the idea above for his 1902 movie A Trip to the Moon Even so the French filmmaker Georges Méliès used How far away is the Moon The Moon is just next door as space distances go It circles or orbits our world about 239,000 miles 385,000 km away The flight from Earth to the Moon took about three days during the Apollo missions of 1968 to 1972 4 Earth’s diameter is 7,926 miles 12,756 km The Moon’s diameter is 2,159 miles 3,475 km
the cold the stillness the silence the infinite and final night of space H G Wells writing about space in his 1901 book The First Men in the Moon In the book Wells’s explorers land on the Moon and find strange aliens living there What was cavorite Another writer H G Wells invented cavorite a material that could turn the effects of gravity on and off In his book The First Men in the Moon Wells envisioned a spacecraft above that was a sealed sphere equipped with many pads to make a soft landing on the Moon At the time no one knew if there was any life on the Moon but Wells imagined an entire alien civilization there Who designed the first proper spaceship Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky thought about how a spaceship right might really work He included a crew cabin storage and a powerful rocket motor Crew cabin Life support systems Fuel tank Rocket motor This 1986 postage stamp shows Tsiolkovsky and his futuristic idea for a space station 5
