Read From the Earth to the Moon Online
Authors: Jules Verne
From the Earth to the Moon (5 page)
It should not be thought that Baltimore was the only city in the grip of such agitation during that memorable evening. The great cities of the Union—New York, Boston, Albany, Washington, Richmond, New Orleans, Charleston, Mobile—from Texas to Massachusetts, from Michigan to Florida, all shared in the delirium. The thirty thousand corresponding members of the Gun Club had seen their president’s letter, and they had been waiting with equal impatience for the famous announcement of October 5. Thus that same evening, as the words came from Barbicane’s lips they were transmitted all over the country on telegraph wires at a speed of 248,447 miles a second. It can therefore be said with absolute certainty that at the same moment the United States of America, ten times as big as France, shouted a single “Hurrah!” and that twenty-five million hearts, swelling with pride, beat with the same pulsation.
The next day, fifteen hundred daily, weekly, semimonthly, and monthly newspapers took up the matter. They examined its physical, meteorological, economical, and moral aspects; they considered it from the viewpoint of civilization and political advantage. They wondered if the moon was a finished world, one that was no longer undergoing any change. Was it like the earth before its atmosphere had been formed? What was the appearance of the side that could not be seen from the earth? Although sending a projectile to the moon was all that had been planned so far, every newspaper saw this as the beginning of a series of experiments. They all hoped that America would some day penetrate the last secrets of the mysterious lunar world, and some of them even seemed to fear that its conquest might upset the balance of power in Europe.
Once the plan had been discussed, not one publication expressed the slightest doubt that it would be carried out. Its advantages were pointed out by the reviews, pamphlets, bulletins, and magazines published by scientific, literary, and religious societies. The Natural History Society of Boston, the American Society of Science and Art of Albany, the Geographical and Statistical Society of New York, the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, and the Smithsonian Institution of Washington sent countless letters of congratulation to the Gun Club, with offers of service and money.
Thus it can be said that no other proposal ever attracted so many supporters. Hesitations, doubts, and misgivings were out of the question. As for the jokes, caricatures, and songs which, in Europe and especially in France, would have greeted the idea of sending a projectile to the moon, they would have been very dangerous to anyone rash
enough to originate them: all the “lifepreservers”
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in the world would have been powerless to save him from the general indignation. There are some things one does not laugh at in the New World. And so from that day onward Barbicane was one of the great citizens of the United States, something like the Washington of science. One incident, among others, will show the strength of this sudden devotion of an entire nation to one man.
Several days after the momentous meeting of the Gun Club, the director of a traveling English theatrical company announced that he was going to present Shakespeare’s
Much Ado About Nothing
in a Baltimore theater. The population of the city saw the title as an offensive reference to Barbicane’s plan. They rushed into the theater, broke up the seats, and forced the unfortunate director to change his program. The director was a clever man; bowing to public demand, he replaced the ill-chosen comedy with
As You Like It
and played to packed houses for many weeks.
*
A mixture of rum, orange juice, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. This yellowish liquid is drunk from mugs through glass straws.
**
An appalling drink of the lower classes.
*
A pocket weapon made of flexible whalebone and a metal ball.
M
EANWHILE, AMID
all the acclaim that was being given him, Barbicane was not wasting time. The first thing he did was to assemble his colleagues in the offices of the Gun Club. There, after discussing the matter, they agreed to consult some astronomers on the astronomical aspects of the project; then, when the reply had been received, they would consider the mechanical means, and nothing would be neglected in assuring the success of the great experiment.
A letter containing a number of precisely worded questions was sent to the observatory at Cambridge, Massachusetts. This city, where the first university in the United States was founded, is justly famous for its observatory. The staff attached to it is composed of scientists of the greatest merit; its powerful telescope is the one that enabled Bond to resolve the nebula of Andromeda, and Clarke to discover the satellite of Sirius. The Gun Club’s confidence in this renowned establishment was therefore fully justified.
Two days later, the impatiently awaited reply was delivered to Barbicane:
Cambridge, October 7
Mr. Impey Barbicane
President of the Gun Club
Baltimore, Maryland
Dear Mr. Barbicane,
On receipt of your letter of October 6, addressed to the Cambridge Observatory in the name of the Gun Club, our staff met immediately and drew up the following reply.
Your questions were these:
- Is it possible to send a projectile to the moon?
- What is the exact distance between the earth and the moon?
- If a projectile is given sufficient initial velocity, how long will it be in flight, and when must it be launched in order for it to strike the moon at a given point?
- At what precise time is the moon in the most favorable position for being reached by the projectile?
- At what point in the sky must the cannon that will launch the projectile be aimed?
- What will be the position of the moon when the projectile is launched?
Concerning the first question: Is it possible to send a projectile to the moon?
Yes, it is possible to do so, if the projectile is given an initial velocity of 36,000 feet per second. Calculation shows that this velocity is sufficient. As one moves away from the earth, the force of gravity
diminishes in inverse ratio to the square of the distance; that is, for a distance three times as great, the force is nine times as small. Therefore, the weight of the projectile will decrease rapidly and will finally be reduced to zero when the gravitational pull of the moon balances that of the earth, which will occur when forty-seven fifty-seconds of the total distance has been covered. If it goes beyond that point, the projectile will be drawn to the moon by lunar gravity alone. The theoretical possibility of the feat is established beyond question; its actual accomplishment will depend solely on the power of the cannon employed.
Concerning the second question: What is the exact distance between the earth and the moon?
The moon does not describe a circle around the earth but an ellipse, one of whose foci is occupied by the earth. The moon is thus nearer to the earth at some times than at others, or, in astronomical terms, it is sometimes at its apogee and sometimes at its perigee. The difference between the two distances is not negligible. At its apogee the moon is 247,552 miles from the earth, and at its perigee it is 218,657 miles away, making a difference of 28,895 miles, or a ninth of the total distance. Calculations should therefore be based on the distance to the moon at its perigee.
Concerning the third question: If a projectile is given sufficient initial velocity, how long will it be in flight, and when must it be launched in order for it to strike the moon at a given point?
If the projectile kept its initial velocity of 36,000 feet per second, it would take only about nine hours to reach its destination; but its velocity will be
constantly diminishing, and calculation shows that it will take 300,000 seconds, or eighty-three hours and twenty minutes, to reach the point where the earth’s gravity is balanced by the moon’s, and from this point it will fall to the moon in 50,000 seconds, or thirteen hours, fifty-three minutes, and twenty seconds. It should therefore be launched ninety-seven hours, thirteen minutes, and twenty seconds before the moon arrives at the point of aim.
Concerning the fourth question: At what precise time is the moon in the most favorable position for being reached by the projectile?
As has been said above, the projectile should be launched when the moon is at its perigee. Furthermore, it should be launched when the moon is at the zenith.
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This will diminish the distance by the length of the earth’s radius, i.e., 3,919 miles, so that the actual distance to be covered will be 214,973 miles. But while the moon reaches its perigee each month, it is not always at the zenith when it does so. These two conditions coincide only at long intervals. The projectile should not be launched until they do. Fortunately this will be the case on December 4 of next year: at midnight the moon will be at its perigee, i.e., at its shortest distance from the earth, and at the same time it will reach the zenith.
Concerning the fifth question: At what point in the sky must the cannon that will launch the projectile be aimed?
From the foregoing it is clear that the cannon must be aimed at the zenith, so that the line of fire
will be perpendicular to the plane of the horizon, and the projectile will escape from the earth’s gravity more rapidly. But in order for the moon to rise to the zenith of a given place the latitude of the place must be no greater than the moon’s declination; that is, the place must lie somewhere between the equator and the twenty-eighth parallel, either north or south.
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At any other point, the line of fire would have to be oblique, and that would be detrimental to the success of the undertaking.
Concerning the sixth question: What will be the position of the moon when the projectile is launched?
When the projectile is launched, the moon, which advances thirteen degrees, ten minutes, and thirty-five seconds each day, will have to be four times that far from the zenith, or fifty-two degrees, forty-two minutes, and twenty seconds. This represents the distance it will cover during the flight of the projectile. But since the deviation imparted to the projectile by the rotation of the earth must also be taken into account, and since the projectile will not reach the moon until after it has deviated a distance equal to sixteen times the radius of the earth, which is equivalent to eleven degrees of the moon’s orbit, these eleven degrees must be added to the fifty-two degrees mentioned above. Thus when the projectile is launched, the moon will be at an angle of approximately sixty-four degrees from the vertical.
Such are the answers to the questions asked of
the Cambridge Observatory by the members of the Gun Club.
To sum up:
- The cannon must be located no more than twenty-eight degrees from the equator.
- It must be aimed at the zenith.
- The projectile must be given an initial velocity of 36,000 feet per second.
- It must be launched on December 1 of next year, at thirteen minutes and twenty seconds before eleven o’clock at night.
- It will strike the moon four days after its departure, on December 4 at exactly midnight, just as the moon reaches the zenith.
The members of the Gun Club must therefore begin work without delay and be ready to launch their projectile at the right time, for if they miss the date of December 4 they will not find the moon in the same conditions of perigee and zenith until eighteen years and eleven days later.
The staff of the Cambridge Observatory is entirely at your disposal for questions of theoretical astronomy, and joins its congratulations to those of all America.
Sincerely,
J. M. Belfast
Director
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The zenith is the point in the sky directly above the observer.
*
Only between the equator and the twenty-eighth parallel does the moon reach the zenith at its culmination. Beyond the twenty-eighth parallel, it approaches the zenith less and less as one moves toward the pole.