humans love exploring the unknown once
we scoured land sea and air it only made
sense that we turned our eyes to the
Stars
today with private companies going to
space almost regularly it's easy to lose
sight that this incredible human
achievement was once just science
fiction let's find out how the science
fiction inspired science reality in
French sci-fi pioneer Jules Verne's
1865 novel from the earth to the moon
members of a gun club launched
themselves in a projectile from a cannon
to the moon because why not
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Verne attempted to do the actual math
and work out what it would take to
launch a vehicle to the moon as it
turned out he was surprisingly accurate
with striking similarities to NASA's
Apollo 11 command module
Vern's fictional shell was hollow and
made mostly of aluminum and was crewed
by three people it launched from Florida
and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean
like the Apollo 11 command module would
just over 100 years later in July 1969
after Verne's novel came HG Wells who
wrote the first men in the moon at the
turn of the century and French filmmaker
Georges méliès whose 1902 silent film a
trip to the moon is often called the
first sci-fi film these stories inspired
real-life rocket scientists to continue
working on the problems of space travel
by the 1950s the US and the Soviet Union
were in a space race the Soviet Union is
launching the first earth satellite
Sputnik one flashes its radio signals
from space
three months after Sputnik the u.s.
launched Explorer one the first American
space satellite
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off into space man that takes real
teamwork and here's a team of junior
spacemen with an out-of-this-world
breakfast with a development of space
flight public interests in space science
reach new heights by the 1960s inspiring
future engineers and sci-fi creators
alike this was a time when Ursula Le
Guin
Isaac Asimov Ray Bradbury Robert
Heinlein and arthur c clarke for writing
some of their most prolific work during
the 1960s space appeared everywhere in
pop culture in fashion fashions for the
21st century home design toys even in
our cereal bowls new post countoff a new
way to help keep you in shape for the
Space Age so why is this idea of space
travel captured people's imaginations
all the way to the breakfast table sugar
Chris honey of a snack you know because
an idea of limitless space leads to
limitless possibilities it's a sentiment
reflected by rocket pioneer konstantin
tsiolkovsky hold on let's rewind a
little bit yeah him remember him from
earlier in the episode he said the earth
is the cradle of humanity but humankind
cannot stay in the cradle forever
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