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The 17th-Century Moon Mission That Never Got Off the Ground
- nkrisc 10y agoI sometimes feel bad for some of these forward-thinking people from the past (relative to our time) that we can't share with them what we now know. Surely they would be thrilled to learn what has been discovered since their death. I'm sure future humans will feel the same about us and our absurd theories and ideas.
- jamiek88 10y agoThis is a great way of looking at it. I hope progress continues and does indeed make our current ideas look slightly foolish and quaint. We stand on the shoulder of giants. Imagine even having the audacity to dream of that in the 17th century.
- nkrisc 10y agoEspecially those who were ahead of their time and maybe even died being told their theories were wrong but have since been proven correct.
- beambot 10y agoTo be fair... Man has never walked on the moon in my lifetime either. I find that sad.
- anothercomment 10y agoThinking about it, it seems weird that there are not at least some happy robots driving around on the Moon that people could take over for fun.
- snewk 10y agoyou might think thats a fun idea, but what happens when 4chan decides to draw a giant penis on the moon with rover tracks?
- abecedarius 10y agoI'm curious how long he thought the trip might take. The distance was accurately-enough known at the time, and it'd take decades at a walking pace with reasonable breaks. Another neat-sounding 17th-century work in this vein was by Huygens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Huygens#Cosmotheoros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Huygens#Cosmotheoro... who seems to deserve a higher profile. Unlucky in being so overshadowed by Newton.
- twic 10y agoIf you ever want to meet a genuine old-school Oxford don, the Allan Chapman mentioned in this article is your man. I was lucky enough to have him as my history of science tutor for a few weeks almost twenty years ago. He's still roaming around the place hamming it up [1]. The article reminded me of a lovely passage from an old speech of his, also largely about John Wilkins [2]: "The other big thing is the method by which these new discoveries had been made. They had not been made in studies. They were not made by the ransacking of ancient texts. Nobody deduced the existence of Nova Scotia. These things were discovered by the very simple process of driving a ship into them. A ship is a form of scientific instrument." [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzwbI7g0whQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzwbI7g0whQ [2] https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/print/the-jacobean-space-programme-wings-springs-and-gunpowder-flying-to-the-moon-from/ https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/print/the-jacob...
- tempestn 10y agoTIL (or at least confirmed) that the letter 'W' was indeed written as a literal double-U.
- xeromal 10y agoEnjoyed the difcourfe.