Happy Birthday Jules Verne
Credit:
NASA
One hundred seventy-five years ago (on February 8th),
Jules Verne was
born
in Nantes, France.
Inspired
by a lifelong fascination with machines,
Verne
wrote visionary works about
"Extraordinary Voyages" including such terrestrial travels as
Around
the World in 80 Days,
Journey to the Centre of the Earth,
and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
In 1865 he published the story of three adventurers who undertook a journey
From
the Earth to the Moon.
Verne's characters rode a
"projectile-vehicle"
fired from a huge cannon constructed in Florida, USA.
Does that sound vaguely
familiar?
A century later,
the Saturn V rocket and NASA's
Apollo program finally
turned this work of fiction into fact, propelling
adventuresome trios on what
was perhaps Verne's most extraordinary voyage.
This dramatic view
shows the moonbound Apollo 11 space-vehicle riding
top a Saturn V rocket as it blasts skyward.
Launched from a spaceport
in Florida, the
Apollo 11 crew traveled to the moon
and back again in 1969, making
humanity's first landing on the lunar surface.