How sci-fi inspired us to go to the Moon
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0:01 - 0:05I want to tell you a story about stories.
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0:06 - 0:09And I want to tell you this story
because I think we need to remember -
0:09 - 0:11that sometimes the stories
we tell each other -
0:11 - 0:16are more than just tales
or entertainment or narratives. -
0:16 - 0:18They're also vehicles
-
0:18 - 0:22for sowing inspiration
and ideas across our societies -
0:22 - 0:24and across time.
-
0:25 - 0:26The story I'm about to tell you
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0:26 - 0:29is about how one of the most advanced
technological achievements -
0:29 - 0:31of the modern era
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0:31 - 0:32has its roots in stories,
-
0:33 - 0:38and how some of the most important
transformations yet to come might also. -
0:39 - 0:41The story begins over 300 years ago,
-
0:41 - 0:45when Galileo Galilei first learned
of the recent Dutch invention -
0:45 - 0:50that took two pieces of shaped glass
and put them in a long tube -
0:50 - 0:53and thereby extended human sight
farther than ever before. -
0:54 - 0:58When Galileo turned
his new telescope to the heavens -
0:58 - 0:59and to the Moon in particular,
-
1:00 - 1:02he discovered something incredible.
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1:03 - 1:08These are pages from Galileo's book
"Sidereus Nuncius," published in 1610. -
1:09 - 1:12And in them, he revealed to the world
what he had discovered. -
1:12 - 1:15And what he discovered was that the Moon
was not just a celestial object -
1:15 - 1:17wandering across the night sky,
-
1:17 - 1:20but rather, it was a world,
-
1:20 - 1:24a world with high, sunlit mountains
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1:24 - 1:27and dark "mare," the Latin word for seas.
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1:28 - 1:31And once this new world
and the Moon had been discovered, -
1:31 - 1:35people immediately began
to think about how to travel there. -
1:35 - 1:37And just as importantly,
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1:37 - 1:39they began to write stories
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1:39 - 1:41about how that might happen
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1:41 - 1:43and what those voyages might be like.
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1:44 - 1:47One of the first people to do so
was actually the Bishop of Hereford, -
1:47 - 1:49a man named Francis Godwin.
-
1:49 - 1:51Godwin wrote a story
about a Spanish explorer, -
1:51 - 1:53Domingo Gonsales,
-
1:53 - 1:56who ended up marooned
on the island of St. Helena -
1:56 - 1:57in the middle of the Atlantic,
-
1:57 - 1:59and there, in an effort to get home,
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2:00 - 2:02developed a machine, an invention,
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2:02 - 2:05to harness the power
of the local wild geese -
2:05 - 2:07to allow him to fly --
-
2:07 - 2:10and eventually to embark
on a voyage to the Moon. -
2:10 - 2:14Godwin's book, "The Man in the Moone,
or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither," -
2:14 - 2:18was only published posthumously
and anonymously in 1638, -
2:18 - 2:22likely on account of the number
of controversial ideas that it contained, -
2:22 - 2:25including an endorsement
of the Copernican view of the universe -
2:25 - 2:28that put the Sun at the center
of the Solar System, -
2:28 - 2:31as well as a pre-Newtonian
concept of gravity -
2:31 - 2:34that had the idea
that the weight of an object -
2:34 - 2:36would decrease with increasing
distance from Earth. -
2:37 - 2:40And that's to say nothing
of his idea of a goose machine -
2:40 - 2:41that could go to the Moon.
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2:41 - 2:43(Laughter)
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2:43 - 2:46And while this idea of a voyage
to the Moon by goose machine -
2:46 - 2:50might not seem particularly insightful
or technically creative to us today, -
2:50 - 2:54what's important is that Godwin described
getting to the Moon not by a dream -
2:54 - 2:57or by magic, as Johannes Kepler
had written about, -
2:58 - 3:00but rather, through human invention.
-
3:00 - 3:04And it was this idea
that we could build machines -
3:04 - 3:06that could travel into the heavens,
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3:06 - 3:09that would plant its seed
in minds across the generations. -
3:10 - 3:13The idea was next taken up
by his contemporary, John Wilkins, -
3:13 - 3:15then just a young student at Oxford,
-
3:15 - 3:17but later, one of the founders
of the Royal Society. -
3:18 - 3:22John Wilkins took the idea of space travel
in Godwin's text seriously -
3:22 - 3:24and wrote not just another story
-
3:24 - 3:27but a nonfiction philosophical treatise,
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3:27 - 3:30entitled, "Discovery
of the New World in the Moon, -
3:30 - 3:32or, a Discourse Tending to Prove
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3:32 - 3:36that 'tis Probable There May Be
Another Habitable World in that Planet." -
3:37 - 3:39And note, by the way,
that word "habitable." -
3:39 - 3:42That idea in itself would have
been a powerful incentive -
3:42 - 3:45for people thinking about how to build
machines that could go there. -
3:46 - 3:49In his books, Wilkins seriously considered
a number of technical methods -
3:49 - 3:51for spaceflight,
-
3:51 - 3:54and it remains to this day
the earliest known nonfiction account -
3:54 - 3:56of how we might travel to the Moon.
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3:56 - 3:59Other stories would soon follow,
most notably by Cyrano de Bergerac, -
3:59 - 4:01with his "Lunar Tales."
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4:01 - 4:04By the mid-17th century,
the idea of people building machines -
4:04 - 4:06that could travel to the heavens
-
4:06 - 4:09was growing in complexity
and technical nuance. -
4:10 - 4:13And yet, in the late 17th century,
-
4:13 - 4:16this intellectual progress
effectively ceased. -
4:16 - 4:19People still told stories
about getting to the Moon, -
4:19 - 4:21but they relied on the old ideas
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4:21 - 4:24or, once again, on dreams or on magic.
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4:24 - 4:26Why?
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4:26 - 4:29Well, because the discovery
of the laws of gravity by Newton -
4:29 - 4:34and the invention of the vacuum pump
by Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle -
4:34 - 4:36meant that people now understood
-
4:36 - 4:39that a condition of vacuum
existed between the planets, -
4:39 - 4:41and consequentially
between the Earth and the Moon. -
4:42 - 4:44And they had no way of overcoming this,
-
4:44 - 4:46no way of thinking about overcoming this.
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4:46 - 4:48And so, for well over a century,
-
4:48 - 4:52the idea of a voyage to the Moon
made very little intellectual progress -
4:53 - 4:55until the rise of
the Industrial Revolution -
4:55 - 4:58and the development
of steam engines and boilers -
4:58 - 5:00and most importantly, pressure vessels.
-
5:01 - 5:05And these gave people the tools to think
about how they could build a capsule -
5:05 - 5:07that could resist the vacuum of space.
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5:08 - 5:12So it was in this context, in 1835,
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5:12 - 5:15that the next great story
of spaceflight was written, -
5:15 - 5:16by Edgar Allan Poe.
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5:16 - 5:20Now, today we think of Poe
in terms of gothic poems -
5:20 - 5:22and telltale hearts and ravens.
-
5:22 - 5:24But he considered himself
a technical thinker. -
5:25 - 5:26He grew up in Baltimore,
-
5:26 - 5:29the first American city
with gas street lighting, -
5:29 - 5:31and he was fascinated
by the technological revolution -
5:31 - 5:33that he saw going on all around him.
-
5:33 - 5:37He considered his own greatest work
not to be one of his gothic tales -
5:37 - 5:39but rather his epic prose poem "Eureka,"
-
5:39 - 5:42in which he expounded
his own personal view -
5:42 - 5:44of the cosmographical nature
of the universe. -
5:45 - 5:49In his stories, he would describe
in fantastical technical detail -
5:49 - 5:51machines and contraptions,
-
5:51 - 5:55and nowhere was he more influential
in this than in his short story, -
5:55 - 5:58"The Unparalleled Adventure
of One Hans Pfaall." -
5:59 - 6:01It's a story of an unemployed
bellows maker in Rotterdam, -
6:01 - 6:05who, depressed and tired of life --
this is Poe, after all -- -
6:05 - 6:06and deeply in debt,
-
6:06 - 6:11he decides to build a hermetically
enclosed balloon-borne carriage -
6:11 - 6:13that is launched into the air by dynamite
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6:13 - 6:16and from there, floats
through the vacuum of space -
6:16 - 6:18all the way to the lunar surface.
-
6:19 - 6:22And importantly, he did not
develop this story alone, -
6:22 - 6:23for in the appendix to his tale,
-
6:23 - 6:27he explicitly acknowledged Godwin's
"A Man in the Moone" -
6:27 - 6:30from over 200 years earlier
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6:30 - 6:31as an influence,
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6:31 - 6:35calling it "a singular and somewhat
ingenious little book." -
6:36 - 6:40And although this idea of a balloon-borne
voyage to the Moon may seem -
6:40 - 6:43not much more technically sophisticated
than the goose machine, -
6:44 - 6:47in fact, Poe was sufficiently detailed
-
6:47 - 6:50in the description
of the construction of the device -
6:50 - 6:54and in terms of the orbital
dynamics of the voyage -
6:54 - 6:58that it could be diagrammed
in the very first spaceflight encyclopedia -
6:58 - 7:00as a mission in the 1920s.
-
7:01 - 7:06And it was this attention to detail,
or to "verisimilitude," as he called it, -
7:06 - 7:08that would influence the next great story:
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7:09 - 7:12Jules Verne's "From the Earth
to the Moon," written in 1865. -
7:13 - 7:15And it's a story that has
a remarkable legacy -
7:15 - 7:18and a remarkable similarity
to the real voyages to the Moon -
7:18 - 7:21that would take place
over a hundred years later. -
7:21 - 7:26Because in the story, the first voyage
to the Moon takes place from Florida, -
7:26 - 7:28with three people on board,
-
7:28 - 7:30in a trip that takes three days --
-
7:30 - 7:34exactly the parameters that would prevail
during the Apollo program itself. -
7:35 - 7:38And in an explicit tribute
to Poe's influence on him, -
7:38 - 7:43Verne situated the group responsible
for this feat in the book in Baltimore, -
7:43 - 7:44at the Baltimore Gun Club,
-
7:44 - 7:47with its members shouting,
"Cheers for Edgar Poe!" -
7:47 - 7:50as they began to lay out their plans
for their conquest of the Moon. -
7:50 - 7:53And just as Verne was influenced by Poe,
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7:53 - 7:56so, too, would Verne's own story
go on to influence and inspire -
7:56 - 7:58the first generation of rocket scientists.
-
7:58 - 8:02The two great pioneers of liquid fuel
rocketry in Russia and in Germany, -
8:02 - 8:04Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth,
-
8:04 - 8:07both traced their own commitment
to the field of spaceflight -
8:07 - 8:10to their reading "From the Earth
to the Moon" as teenagers, -
8:10 - 8:12and then subsequently
committing themselves -
8:12 - 8:15to trying to make that story a reality.
-
8:16 - 8:19And Verne's story was not
the only one in the 19th century -
8:19 - 8:20with a long arm of influence.
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8:20 - 8:22On the other side of the Atlantic,
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8:22 - 8:25H.G. Wells's "War of the Worlds"
directly inspired -
8:25 - 8:28a young man in Massachusetts,
Robert Goddard. -
8:28 - 8:30And it was after reading
"War of the Worlds" -
8:31 - 8:32that Goddard wrote in his diary,
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8:32 - 8:34one day in the late 1890s,
-
8:34 - 8:38of resting while trimming
a cherry tree on his family's farm -
8:38 - 8:43and having a vision of a spacecraft
taking off from the valley below -
8:43 - 8:45and ascending into the heavens.
-
8:45 - 8:49And he decided then and there
that he would commit the rest of his life -
8:49 - 8:52to the development of the spacecraft
that he saw in his mind's eye. -
8:53 - 8:55And he did exactly that.
-
8:55 - 8:58Throughout his career,
he would celebrate that day -
8:58 - 9:00as his anniversary day,
his cherry tree day, -
9:00 - 9:04and he would regularly read and reread
the works of Verne and of Wells -
9:04 - 9:07in order to renew his inspiration
and his commitment -
9:07 - 9:11over the decades of labor
and effort that would be required -
9:11 - 9:14to realize the first part of his dream:
-
9:14 - 9:16the flight of a liquid fuel rocket,
-
9:16 - 9:18which he finally achieved in 1926.
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9:19 - 9:23So it was while reading "From the Earth
to the Moon" and "The War of the Worlds" -
9:23 - 9:26that the first pioneers of astronautics
were inspired to dedicate their lives -
9:26 - 9:28to solving the problems of spaceflight.
-
9:28 - 9:31And it was their treatises
and their works in turn -
9:31 - 9:33that inspired the first
technical communities -
9:33 - 9:36and the first projects of spaceflight,
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9:36 - 9:38thus creating a direct chain of influence
-
9:38 - 9:41that goes from Godwin to Poe to Verne
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9:41 - 9:42to the Apollo program
-
9:42 - 9:45and to the present-day
communities of spaceflight. -
9:46 - 9:48So why I have told you all this?
-
9:49 - 9:51Is it just because I think it's cool,
-
9:51 - 9:55or because I'm just
weirdly fascinated by stories -
9:55 - 9:57of 17th- and 19th-century science fiction?
-
9:59 - 10:00It is, admittedly, partly that.
-
10:02 - 10:05But I also think
that these stories remind us -
10:05 - 10:07of the cultural processes
driving spaceflight -
10:07 - 10:10and even technological
innovation more broadly. -
10:11 - 10:12As an economist working at NASA,
-
10:12 - 10:15I spend time thinking about
the economic origins -
10:15 - 10:17of our movement out into the cosmos.
-
10:17 - 10:23And when you look before the investments
of billionaire tech entrepreneurs -
10:23 - 10:24and before the Cold War Space Race,
-
10:24 - 10:28and even before the military investments
in liquid fuel rocketry, -
10:28 - 10:33the economic origins of spaceflight
are found in stories and in ideas. -
10:34 - 10:38It was in these stories that the first
concepts for spaceflight were articulated. -
10:38 - 10:40And it was through these stories
-
10:40 - 10:44that the narrative of a future
for humanity in space -
10:44 - 10:47began to propagate from mind to mind,
-
10:47 - 10:51eventually creating an intergenerational
intellectual community -
10:51 - 10:54that would iterate
on the ideas for spacecraft -
10:54 - 10:56until such a time
as they could finally be built. -
10:57 - 11:01This process has now been going on
for over 300 years, -
11:01 - 11:05and the result is
a culture of spaceflight. -
11:06 - 11:08It's a culture that involves
thousands of people -
11:08 - 11:10over hundreds of years.
-
11:10 - 11:13Because for hundreds of years,
some of us have looked at the stars -
11:13 - 11:14and longed to go.
-
11:14 - 11:16And because for hundreds of years,
-
11:16 - 11:18some of us have dedicated our labors
-
11:18 - 11:20to the development
of the concepts and systems -
11:20 - 11:22required to make those voyages possible.
-
11:24 - 11:26I also wanted to tell you
about Godwin, Poe and Verne -
11:27 - 11:30because I think their stories
also tell us of the importance -
11:30 - 11:34of the stories that we tell each other
about the future more generally. -
11:34 - 11:37Because these stories don't just
transmit information or ideas. -
11:37 - 11:39They can also nurture passions,
-
11:40 - 11:42passions that can lead us
to dedicate our lives -
11:42 - 11:45to the realization of important projects.
-
11:45 - 11:47Which means that these stories can and do
-
11:47 - 11:50influence social and technological forces
-
11:50 - 11:52centuries into the future.
-
11:53 - 11:57I think we need to realize this
and remember it when we tell our stories. -
11:57 - 11:59We need to work hard to write stories
-
11:59 - 12:02that don't just show us the possible
dystopian paths we may take -
12:02 - 12:05for a fear that the more dystopian
stories we tell each other, -
12:05 - 12:08the more we plant seeds
for possible dystopian futures. -
12:09 - 12:12Instead we need to tell stories
that plant the seeds, -
12:12 - 12:13if not necessarily for utopias,
-
12:13 - 12:17then at least for great new projects
of technological, societal -
12:17 - 12:19and institutional transformation.
-
12:19 - 12:23And if we think of this idea
that the stories we tell each other -
12:23 - 12:24can transform the future
-
12:24 - 12:27is fanciful or impossible,
-
12:27 - 12:29then I think we need to remember
the example of this, -
12:29 - 12:31our voyage to the Moon,
-
12:31 - 12:33an idea from the 17th century
-
12:33 - 12:37that propagated culturally
for over 300 years -
12:37 - 12:39until it could finally be realized.
-
12:40 - 12:43So, we need to write new stories,
-
12:44 - 12:46stories that, 300 years in the future,
-
12:46 - 12:48people will be able
to look back upon and remark -
12:48 - 12:52how they inspired us
to new heights and to new shores, -
12:52 - 12:55how they showed us new paths
and new possibilities, -
12:55 - 12:58and how they shaped
our world for the better. -
12:58 - 12:59Thank you.
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12:59 - 13:03(Applause)
- Title:
- How sci-fi inspired us to go to the Moon
- Speaker:
- Alexander MacDonald
- Description:
-
Long before we had rocket scientists, the idea of spaceflight traveled from mind to mind across generations. With great visuals, TED Fellow and NASA economist Alexander MacDonald shows how 300 years of sci-fi tales -- from Edgar Allan Poe to Jules Verne to H.G. Wells and beyond -- sparked a culture of space exploration. A fascinating look at how stories become reality, featuring a goose machine sent to the Moon.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 13:15
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for How centuries of sci-fi sparked spaceflight | ||
Brian Greene approved English subtitles for How centuries of sci-fi sparked spaceflight | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for How centuries of sci-fi sparked spaceflight | ||
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Camille Martínez edited English subtitles for How centuries of sci-fi sparked spaceflight | ||
Camille Martínez edited English subtitles for How centuries of sci-fi sparked spaceflight | ||
Joseph Geni edited English subtitles for How centuries of sci-fi sparked spaceflight | ||
Joseph Geni edited English subtitles for How centuries of sci-fi sparked spaceflight |