Dreams of Space: Before Apollo (Moon Flight Atlas)

Dreams of Space: Before Apollo (Moon Flight Atlas) — page 3
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