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A review by runeclausen
From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne
2.0
In times of peace following the great war of indepence and revolution for the united states, what is a Gun Club to do with itself, when not needed to build ever bigger and more destructive guns and cannons?
Well obviously they build a giant 900 feet long cannon to launch a projectile to the moon. What else could they possible do?
This book is a classical Jules Verne story in which he builds up the story carefully and makes sure to detail all the scientific details as precisely as possible (surprisingly well for a book about space-travel written in the 19th century), and does all to make the case that this could actually have happend.
The president of said gun club, Barbicane, has a rivalry with a certain Captain Nicholl who disputes the possibility of this endeavour ever being able to succeed. Nicholl even goes as far as launching 5 bets about wheter certain milestones of the journey will fail or not, for a grand total of $15,000 for all 5 bets. Barbicane takes him up on his offer.
When an excentric french man, Michel Ardane, enters the scene and says that he is ready to venture on a spacecraft to the moon, instead of just sending a hollow metal-cage, Barbicane and Nicholl gets a common friend that makes peace between them, and they all 3 decide to go on this one-way trip to the moon together.
The story finished just after the take-off, which goes well, except that they end up not hitting the moon but missing it ever so slightly and get caught up in orbit around the moon instead with limited oxygen and food. There is still a chance that they will plunge down to the surface as their orbit is elliptical.
The actual exploration of the moon will no doubt be detailed in the sequel "Around the Moon".
All in all this is not a very interesting story, but just getting all the science down that could legitimize all the moon-exploration-action that i suspect will go down in the next book, because this book is poor in action, but rich in outdated science. Thus it will only get 2 stars, even though it is very well written.
Well obviously they build a giant 900 feet long cannon to launch a projectile to the moon. What else could they possible do?
This book is a classical Jules Verne story in which he builds up the story carefully and makes sure to detail all the scientific details as precisely as possible (surprisingly well for a book about space-travel written in the 19th century), and does all to make the case that this could actually have happend.
The president of said gun club, Barbicane, has a rivalry with a certain Captain Nicholl who disputes the possibility of this endeavour ever being able to succeed. Nicholl even goes as far as launching 5 bets about wheter certain milestones of the journey will fail or not, for a grand total of $15,000 for all 5 bets. Barbicane takes him up on his offer.
When an excentric french man, Michel Ardane, enters the scene and says that he is ready to venture on a spacecraft to the moon, instead of just sending a hollow metal-cage, Barbicane and Nicholl gets a common friend that makes peace between them, and they all 3 decide to go on this one-way trip to the moon together.
The story finished just after the take-off, which goes well, except that they end up not hitting the moon but missing it ever so slightly and get caught up in orbit around the moon instead with limited oxygen and food. There is still a chance that they will plunge down to the surface as their orbit is elliptical.
The actual exploration of the moon will no doubt be detailed in the sequel "Around the Moon".
All in all this is not a very interesting story, but just getting all the science down that could legitimize all the moon-exploration-action that i suspect will go down in the next book, because this book is poor in action, but rich in outdated science. Thus it will only get 2 stars, even though it is very well written.