From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne Fiction Fantasy & Magic (Hardcover)

ID: aZADzP6nFc

Manufacturer: Alan Rodgers Books

From the Earth to the Moon is the story of the Baltimore Gun Club a post-American Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts and their attempts to build an enormous sky-facing Columbiad space gun and launch three people the Gun Club s president his Philadelphian armor-making rival and a French poet in a projectile with the goal of a moon landing. Verne s 1865 tale of a trip to the moon is (as you d expect from Verne) great fun even if bits of it now seem in retrospect a little strange. Our rocket ship gets shot out of a cannon? To the moon? Goodness! But in other ways it s full of eerie bits of business that turned out to be very near reality: he had the cost when you adjust for inflation almost exactly right. There are other similarities too. Verne s cannon was named the Columbiad; the Apollo 11 command module was named Columbia. Apollo 11 had a three-person crew just as Verne s did; and both blasted off from the American state of Florida. Even the return to earth happened in more-or-less the same place. Coincidence -- or fact!? We say you ll have to read this story yourself to judge.