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The first description of a machine specially designed for space travel was made in a book published in 1657.
It was a box large enough for a pbadenger, with a hollow crystal ceiling that focused the sun's rays. . The warm air inside this space was rising and pbading through a tube at the top while the air was coming from below.
This is how the takeoff was described: " Suddenly, I felt my stomach tremble, like a man erected using a device, I was going to open the hatch for J & # 39; I discovered the cause of this feeling, but when I reached out, I noticed through the hole in the floor of my box that my tower was already well below me, and my little castle in the air, pushed under my feet, let me glimpse
Although the operation of this suction propulsion is not entirely clear, it is amazing that some speculation about space travel in the mid-17th century.
Who was this person – did he imagine a vehicle to explore new worlds far from the Earth?
C & # 39; was a Frenchman whose name may seem familiar: Cyrano de Bergerac But we are not talking about the character with the big nose represented by Gérard Depardieu in the film of the same name in 1990, nor of Steve Martin in the film Roxanne 1987.
Cyrano de Bergerac was a real person who lived
Poet, playwright, thinker and libertine
He called Hercules-Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655), but he did not come really from Bergerac. He simply adopted the elegant title because his Parisian family owned a small farm in Gascony
He was a soldier, a player and a duelist who had retired from military explosions following injuries, around 1639, at the 20 years old. He attended a university and, judging by his work, was very aware of the philosophical and scientific debates of his time.
He wrote essays of various kinds. He created plays of which Molière (1622-1673) stole the stage. There were political satires and even published a collection of fictitious love letters that ridiculed the solemn amorous solemnity for which the fictional character who bears his name is known.
But his most successful works are perhaps two books, The States and Empires of the Moon
No books have been published during the short life of Cyrano de Bergerac but they were printed by one of his friends two years after his death.
As in Utopia (1516), by Tomas Morus, or by Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift, he makes fun of the
, moreover, the fantasies of Cyrano de Bergerac on the space flights leave a scientific and technological heritage
to the discovery of the Moon by Galileo
To travel on the moon Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) surprised everybody with a little book describing what he had seen when he had turned his telescope towards the natural satellite of the Earth. enthusiasm around this idea.
The Italian scientist had announced that the moon was not the smooth and perfect sphere, as had the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BC 322 BC). "There are mountains and valleys," said Galileo, "clearly in the shadows that go beyond when the lunar day goes down at night."
They all spoke of the new world of Galileo, and some writers considered him a kind of second Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), discovering new horizons.
A Spaniard on the Moon
Cyrano de Bergerac's most famous precursor of fiction was a book written around 1628 by an Englishman named Francis Godwin (1562-1633), who, as bishop of Hereford proves that welcoming the new image of the cosmos proposed by Galileo did not mean coming into conflict with religious beliefs.
Godwin's book called The Man in Lu a. His hero is a Spaniard named Domingo Gonsales and he travels dramatically by hitching a car to a flock of wild geese that migrate between the Earth and the Moon.
Some thought that there was really such animal migrations, because, at the time, no one knew that there was no such thing as an animal. air in the space.
But the fantasy of the Moon of Cyrano de Bergerac is more ambitious. It is a satire in which the customs and characteristics of the societies with which the traveler finds himself are exaggerations or inventions, which shows that after all, everything is arbitrary.
It is the kind of ideology that the era of exploration has produced in defying the old The details about the real Cyrano de Bergerac are incomplete, but judging by his books, he was ironic and irreverent, but also intelligent and open minded.
Dyrcona makes his first voyages on a ship made of dew bottles, based on the idea that dew evaporates because there is
However, he is able to To reach the Moon thanks to a force of attraction between the Moon and the bone marrow that Dyrcona had rubbed in their bruises to heal them.
Although this may seem purely medieval superstition, it is an expression of the doubts of the time. Natural philosophers still did not understand the forces of nature.
It was thought, for example, that the mysterious force that forms a compbad to the north indicates that the Earth itself was a giant magnet: a crazy idea for the
So it is clear that the Moon does not attract not the bone marrow but, as it was found that other invisible forces of nature seemed so fantastic and strange that it was not uncommon to imagine such a thing.
A challenge to the sacred
In Canada, he discusses with the Viceroy the question of whether the Earth is at the center of the universe, as Aristotle said, or of the Sun.
In his travels, Dyrcona constantly maintains philosophical debates about scientific ideas with other characters. , as insisted Galileo
The same vacuum spacecraft used by Dyrcona to get to the sun challenged Aristotle's idea that emptiness was by nature impossible, a question which at At the time there was lively debate among nature philosophers.
This idea was transmitted to Dyrcona on the Moon by none other than Dominic Gonsales, the hero of Francis Godwin's previous book, who, in a marvelous fragment of meta-narrative, appears as a kind of mascot of the world. gigantic animal man who governs the moon. 19659002] Gonsales confesses to Dyrcona that he left Earth desperate, as the Spanish Inquisition had repressed his anti-Aristotelian visions.
Snowflakes in flames
rcona returns to Earth, he writes The States and Empires of the Moon and accuses him of being a wizard. So he goes into his empty box to visit the states and empires of the Sun, a "brilliant land," he says, "which looks like flaming snowflakes."
Discover that this luminous land is the place where souls go after the death of people.
merges with the sun, those of the philosophers survive. In the last sentences of the second book, which Cyrano de Bergerac never finished, Dyrcona begins a dialogue with one of the famous philosophers.
"There are many things we read in his books that make us think" cool! Mary Baine Campbell, Brandeis University, USA
"At that time, people were interested in gravity because they wanted to leave the planet, but they knew something was not allowed Cyrano invents comic strips for Dyrcona – like drops of dew – while others – such as the ship propelled by step-by-step rockets and from which parts burned as they progress – have come to be elements that we now know at work, says Campbell.
"In addition, there are some surprising facts, such as missing a quarter of the way to reach the moon, and Dyrcona notes that she is pulling it. This, in addition to being mathematically exact, because it implies to think that the gravitational gravity attraction is not unique and that other bodies can have it. But as I was writing it, I once again suggested that the Earth may not be the center of the Universe. The notes of this style today amuse us and surprise us, but at the time, they were potentially dangerous. "
However, Cyrano de Bergerac does not die because of his ideas, he is the victim of a beam that falls on his head at the age of 36.
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