Free
People have dreamed of going to the Moon for a long time.
We started thinking about it way before we even had rockets to send astronauts there. Even after rockets were invented, some scientists still thought Moon travel was impossible.
1657
◀ In 1657, French writer Cyrano de Bergerac wrote a tale about going to the Moon. In it, he stuck bottles containing dewdrops to his body. The dew evaporated in the morning sunlight, and de Bergerac was lifted into the sky. He landed on the Moon, where he found lush forests and strange animals. He met intelligent creatures with four legs who played music to communicate. He also met the king of the Moon. The king got mad when de Bergerac said that the Moon was only a small satellite of Earth.
1865
In 1865, French science-fiction author Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon. In his novel, the Baltimore Gun Club built a big cannon that could shoot a giant missile to the Moon. The ship was shaped like a bullet and could carry three explorers. Verne wrote that an object would need to travel seven miles per second to escape Earth’s gravity and reach the Moon. He was right! ▶
1902
◀ In 1902, French director and magician Georges Méliès made a silent film of Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon. In it, a spaceship crashes into the eye of the Man in the Moon, and he winces. The explorers find insectlike creatures called Selenites. They vanish when hit with an umbrella!
1920
▲ In 1920, American scientist Dr. Robert Goddard proposed launching a small, unmanned rocket. It would hit the Moon and make a bright explosion so people with telescopes could see where it landed. Goddard was a pioneer of rocket science. Yet back then the New York Times dismissed his idea. It insisted that rockets could not work in space because the exhaust from the vehicle would have “nothing to push against.” The writer did not do his homework very well. Rockets can move without pushing against anything.
1950s
◀ In the early 1950s, the idea of going to the Moon got more popular. Collier’s magazine printed articles by rocketry pioneer Dr. Wernher von Braun. He had developed powerful rockets to carry weapons for Germany during World War II. His stories featured illustrations by Chesley Bonestell. The space artist drew exciting, realistic scenes of what astronauts might see on the Moon. Von Braun’s popular writings even inspired President Dwight Eisenhower. But the president’s military advisers didn’t believe humans could go to the Moon. They thought that was just “science fiction.”
1959–1960
The television series Men Into Space ran from 1959 to 1960. It had realistic scenes of how humans would explore the Moon in the future. In the show, rocket shuttles regularly took astronauts back and forth to a Moon base. This base had all the comforts of home. It had bedrooms, a kitchen, and many extra spacesuits for taking moonwalks. ▶
