Unit 8 Science and fiction  Para. 1  The story, From the Earth to the Moon, came from the ingenious mind of Jules Verne, the French father of science fiction. Verne was one of those writers writing about imaginary moon voyages, but his moon trip story was the first attempt to reach the moon by truly scientific means in modern fiction.

Para. 2  In many cases, From the Earth to the Moon is almost a reportorial account of the historic event more than 100 years later--- the Apollo 11 flight of 1969.

Para. 3  In terms of crew: three  In terms of size: very much alike  In terms of blast-off: Florida, only about 140 miles west of Cape Kennedy  In terms of speed: 36,000 /35,553 feet per second

Para. 3  In terms of how long: 97 hours, 13 minutes, 20 seconds/103 hours, 30 minutes  In terms of study: the moon’s surface from above  In terms of ending: splashed down in the Pacific Ocean  In terms of the name of the Apollo 11 command ship: Columbiad/Columbia

Para. 4  人类登月第一脚印 hspace  How could Jules Verne make up a story that came so close to the real thing?  Because Verne knew a great deal about the laws of science, so he wrote an adventure story based on them. The plans for the flight of Apollo 11 were based on these same laws.

Landing on the moon  The Sea of Tranquility is the place where Neil Armstrong took his “one small step” 104 years later.

Landing on the moon  Differences of the two trips  The power came from a 900-foot cannon drilled vertically into the soil and loaded with 400,000 pounds of guncotton.

Spaceships  Differences of the two trips  The three men cooked meals with gas.  They had eight extra passengers---two dogs and six chickens.  The men had cuttings from some grape vines, which they hoped to plant on the moon

Spaceship

spaceship