March 2008 sees the launch of the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), an unmanned resupply spacecraft developed by the European Space Agency. ATVs are designed to supply the International Space Station with propellant, water, air, payload and experiments. In addition, ATVs can re-boost the station, into a higher orbit, which degrades over time due to friction with the atmosphere.
Each ATV will be launched by an Ariane 5 from Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana. After approximately two days of flight it will arrive at the International Space Station and dock automatically to the Russian Service Module Zvezda.
The very first ATV is named 'Jules Verne', in honour of a man of amazing vision who, as well as popularising science fiction, anticipated humanity's voyage into space.
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author born on 8 February 1828 and, according to the Unesco Index Translationum, is regularly placed among the top five most translated authors in the world.
The first 'modern' work in the science fiction genre was the gothic novel 'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley. But it was Jules Verne who fully developed the concept, in a long series of 19th century novels. Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before air travel and practical submarines were invented, and before any means of space travel had been devised. He led the way for other talents to exploit the science fiction genre, mostly notably H.G. Wells.
Verne's adventure stories mixed daring romantic adventure with technology that was either up-to-the-minute or logically extrapolated into the future. They were tremendous commercial successes and established that an author could make a career out of such material.
Around the year 1862, Verne met his publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, one of the most important French publishers of the 19th century. They formed an excellent writer-publisher team. He helped improve Verne's writings, which until then had been repeatedly rejected by other publishers. Hetzel read a draft of Verne's story about the balloon exploration of Africa, which had been rejected by other publishers for being "too scientific". Verne rewrote the story, which was published in 1863 in book form as 'Cinq semaines en ballon' (Five Weeks in a Balloon). Acting on Hetzel's advice, Verne added comical accents to his novels, changed sad endings into happy ones, and toned down various political messages.
After meeting Hetzel, Verne published at least twice a year. The most successful novels were 'Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours' (Around the World in Eighty Days), 'Voyage au centre de la terre' (Journey to the Centre of the Earth) and 'Vingt mille lieues sous les mers' (Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea). Most of his stories were first serialised in the Magazine d'Education et de Récréation, a Hetzel biweekly publication, before being published in the form of books. He became enormously wealthy and, in 1870, only seven years after his first work was published, he was appointed Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur.
Hetzel rejected only one novel: 'Paris in the 20th Century'. It was, he thought, "too pessimistic". It was only rediscovered in 1989 and describes the life of a young man who lives in a world of every modern convenience: glass skyscrapers, high-speed trains, automobiles, air conditioning, television, and a worldwide communications network, yet cannot find happiness.
An 1865 work which became known in English as 'From the Earth to the Moon' was remarkable in anticipating the Apollo space missions which took place a century later. It tells the story of three members of an American gun club who build a cannon which launches them in a projectile capsule to the Moon.
The story is also notable in that Verne attempted to do some rough calculations as to the requirements for the cannon and, considering the total lack of any data on the subject at the time, some of his figures are surprisingly close to reality. The physical dimensions of the projectile are very close to the dimensions of the Apollo Command Service Module.
Project HARP proved that a cannon can shoot a 180-kg projectile up to 180 kilometres in height and reach 32% of the escape velocity needed. This gave rise to the Project Orion study of spacecraft design.
Verne's voyage blasted off from Florida, as did all Apollo missions. Possibly Verne anticipated, as NASA later did, that objects launch into space most easily if they are launched from the equator, and Florida is the nearest part of the US mainland. The three Apollo astronauts also returned to Earth in a splash landing.
Verne named his cannon the 'Columbiad' and the later Apollo 11 command module was named 'Columbia'.
Verne kept up with scientific and technological progress and used so-called "scholars' jokes" (a joke that only a scientist may recognise) in his novels. In Mysterious Island for instance, the main character's dog is attacked by a wild dugong. The dugong though is a herbivorous mammal. In 'Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen', a manticora beetle escapes by flying away even though the genus is well-known among biologists to be flightless.
Verne died in 1905, living long enough to see his space travel novel become the world's first science fiction film as 'Le Voyage dans la Lune' (Journey to the Moon). 64 years later, humans went there for real.
