Hasta La Gadget!

“A hundred years ago, Jules Verne wrote a book about a voyage to the Moon. His spaceship, Columbia, took off from Florida and landed in the Pacific Ocean after completing a trip to the Moon. It seems appropriate to us to share with you some of the reflections of the crew as the modern-day Columbia completes its rendezvous with the planet Earth and the same Pacific Ocean tomorrow.”

Those are the words Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong recited for an entranced public as his ship returned from its mission to the moon. Armstrong was right to mention Verne’s 1865 sci-fi classic. There are, in fact, some oddly prescient details in From the Earth to the Moon–even for an author so forward thinking as Verne.

Armstrong points out the similarities between its name and the name of the Apollo 11’s command module–that part’s actually only part right. The name of the space cannon used to launch the ship was the Columbiad, named for a real U.S. cannon that was used heavily in the war of 1812.

Verne estimated that the mission would have cost his day’s equivalent to $12.1 billion. Surprisingly spot on–the Apollo program up through Apollo 8 (the first manned vehicle to circumnavigate the moon) cost $14.4 billion. As with the book, that mission also a crew of three astronauts. Verne’s were named Ardan, Barbicane, and Nicholl–Apollo 8’s were Anders, Borman and Lovell.

The launch occurred 132 miles from the site of Verne’s prediction. As the above shot illustrates, the two ships also shared a number of physical properties.