The desire for space travel is inherent in me. Successful and not so Jules Verne's predictions

"Whatever I compose, whatever I invent, everything
it will always be below the actual capacity
person. The time will come when science will outstrip fantasy."
Jules Verne

Jules Verne is known not only as one of the founders of science fiction, but also as a writer who, like no one else, was able to predict the future and direction of technology development. Indeed, there are few authors who would do as much to popularize science and progress as the great Frenchman did. Today, in the 21st century, we can judge how often he was right.

THE HARNESS OF APOLLO

One of Verne's boldest prophecies is space travel. Of course, the Frenchman was not the first author to send his heroes to heavenly spheres. But before him, literary astronauts flew only miraculously. For example, in the middle of the 17th century, the English priest Francis Godwin wrote the utopia "Man in the Moon", the hero of which went to the satellite with the help of fantastic birds. Unless Cyrano de Bergerac flew to the moon not only riding on the devil, but also with the help of a primitive analogue of a rocket. However, writers did not think about the scientific substantiation of space flight until the 19th century.

The first who seriously undertook to send a person into space without the help of "devilry" was just Jules Verne - he naturally relied on the power of the human mind. However, in the sixties of the century before last, people could only dream of space exploration, and science had not yet seriously dealt with this issue. The French writer had to fantasize solely at his own peril and risk. Vern decided that the best way to send a person into space will be a giant cannon, the projectile of which will serve as a passenger module. It is with the projectile that one of the main problems of the "lunar gun" project is connected.

Vern himself was well aware that the astronauts at the time of the shot would face serious overloads. This can be seen from the fact that the heroes of the novel "From the Earth to the Moon" tried to protect themselves with the help of upholstered walls and mattresses. Needless to say, all this in reality would not have saved a person who decided to repeat the feat of the members of the "Cannon Club".

However, even if travelers managed to ensure safety, there would still be two practically insoluble problems. Firstly, a gun capable of launching a projectile of such a mass into space must be just fantastically long. Secondly, even today it is impossible to provide a cannon projectile with a starting speed that allows it to overcome the gravity of the Earth. Finally, the writer did not take into account air resistance - although against the background of other problems with the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe space gun, this already seems like a trifle.

At the same time, it is impossible to overestimate the influence that Verne's novels had on the origin and development of astronautics. The French writer predicted not only the journey to the moon, but also some of its details - for example, the size of the "passenger module", the number of crew members and the approximate cost of the project. Verne became one of the main inspirers of the space age. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky said about him: “The desire for space travel was laid in me by the famous visionary J. Verne. He awakened the work of the brain in this direction. Ironically, it was Tsiolkovsky who at the beginning of the 20th century finally substantiated the incompatibility of Vern's idea with manned space exploration.

TRANSPORT OF TOMORROW

In fact, Jules Verne most often anticipated not the emergence of new technologies, but the direction of development of existing ones. This can be most clearly shown by the example of the famous Nautilus.

The first designs and even working prototypes of submarines appeared long before the birth of Vern himself. Moreover, by the time he began work on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the first mechanical submarine, dubbed the Diver, was already being launched in France - and Verne was collecting information about it before he started the novel. But what was the Diver? A team of 12 people could hardly fit on board the ship, it could dive no more than 10 meters and develop underwater speeds of only 4 knots per hour.

Against this background, the characteristics and capabilities of the Nautilus looked absolutely incredible. Comfortable as an ocean liner, and perfectly adapted for long expeditions, a submarine with a depth of immersion, which was calculated in kilometers, and a top speed of 50 knots. Fantasy! And so far. As happened more than once with Vern, he overestimated the possibilities of not only modern, but also future technologies. Even nuclear submarines of the 21st century are not able to compete in speed with the Nautilus and repeat the maneuvers that he did effortlessly. Nor can they go without refueling and resupplying for as long as the Nautilus could. And, of course, today's submarines will never be managed by one person - and Nemo continued to swim on the Nautilus even after he lost the entire crew. On the other hand, there was no air regeneration system on the ship; to replenish its supply, Captain Nemo needed to rise to the surface every five days.

THE DIMENSIONS OF THE GUNS CAPABLE OF LAUNCHING A PROJECT INTO SPACE MUST BE SIMPLY FANTASTIC.

Jules Verne was born 110 years ago in the French city of Nantes.

The great romantic of science, the author of wonderful science fiction works, won unfading fame all over the world. In 1863, he released his first science fiction work, Five Days in a Balloon. This novel was a great success. Following this, Jules Verne began to systematically release travel novels that amaze the reader with an exciting presentation, rich imagination and a thorough acquaintance of the author with various fields of science and technology.

Here is The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, and the reader is transferred to the harsh and romantic atmosphere of the Arctic, as if participating in the expedition of the fearless captain and his companions. Here is "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" - and the reader sees himself on a fantastic submarine, studying the wonderful life in the depths of the ocean. Here the reader follows with trepidation the many adventures of the heroes of the novel Around the World in 80 Days. Here the reader, along with shipwrecked travelers, landed on an unknown land, which the author called "The Mysterious Island". The most amazing countries are visited by the reader, following the masterful exposition of Jules Verne. He flies with the author's heroes in a cannon shell to the moon, experiencing extraordinary adventures during this interplanetary journey. He goes to the center of the Earth, and the author reveals to him the wonderful secrets of the underworld...

About sixty novels were written by Jules Verne during the 40 years of his remarkable creative activity in the field of science fiction. Each of these novels introduces the reader to some area of ​​science - geography, geology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc.

Jules Verne was a widely educated man. He read a lot, seriously studying the successes of contemporary science and technology. Therefore, he was always at the height of the last scientific achievements, about which he spoke with breathtaking skill to his readers.

But Jules Verne did not limit himself to a conscientious and entertaining retelling of already known scientific positions. He was a "discoverer", he boldly looked into the future, expanding the horizons of human knowledge. His wonderful genius possessed an invaluable gift of scientific foresight. Much that Jules Verne wrote about did not yet exist in his time. But the brilliant writer was never a groundless dreamer, he always proceeded from the real achievements of science and technology, from the problems that confronted his contemporaries - scientists and inventors. Jules Verne perfectly understood where this or that science was developing, and then, on the wings of his powerful imagination, he made a bold leap forward into the future. And we know that much of what Jules Verne wrote about and which did not yet exist in his time has now been realized, has become a reality thanks to the development of science and technology. Jules Verne dreamed of conquering the depths of the water and predicted the appearance of submarines, which are now the most important part of navy all states. Jules Verne dreamed of conquering the air element and predicted the appearance of aircraft, which now created a new era in the movement of man and overcoming space. Jules Verne defended the reality of interplanetary travel, a problem that modern science is working on very seriously. Jules Verne wrote about the conquest of the North Pole and the snowy expanses of the Arctic - a dream that was realized by Soviet hero pilots, Soviet polar explorers and explorers...

The Académie française awarded Jules Verne with an award for his great contribution to the field of science fiction. This proves the very great importance that the works of the science fiction writer had for the formulation of serious scientific problems. Many of the most prominent inventors and scientists emphasized the strong influence that the works of Jules Verne had on them, giving a powerful impetus to the movement of their creative thought. “The desire for space travel is inherent in me by Jules Verne. He awakened the work of the brain in this direction,” said our great scientist and inventor K. E. Tsiolkovsky. The greatest French scientist Georges Claude speaks of Jules Verne with the same warmth and gratitude. Jules Verne - "the one who is usually considered only an entertainer of youth, but who in reality is the inspiration for many scientific researchers."

Jules Verne combined wide knowledge, the gift of scientific foresight with great literary talent - this is the reason for the charm that he has on his readers. Many writers could envy the high praise that Leo Tolstoy gave to the brilliant science fiction writer: “Jules Verne's novels are excellent. I read them as adults, and yet, I remember, they delighted me. In building an intriguing, exciting plot, he is an amazing master. And you should have listened to how enthusiastically Turgenev speaks of him! I don't remember him admiring anyone else as much as Jules Verne."

Many generations of young people were brought up and are brought up on the novels of Jules Verne. Many have a grateful feeling for this wonderful writer for the whole life for those unforgettable hours of pleasure that we experience when immersed in the reading of his novels, for the awakening of a joyful desire for creativity, for the struggle with nature, for the achievement of great goals. Jules Verne is especially close to the Soviet youth. We appreciate Jules Verne for his cheerful optimism, for his ardent, unquenchable faith in the power of human knowledge, for his faith in the all-conquering progress of science and technology. Jules Verne is especially close to the Soviet reader because only in our country of socialism is possible that unprecedented flourishing of science and technology, and only in the country of socialism can those wonderful ideas dreamed of by the great romantic of science be fully realized.

20th century through the eyes of science fiction writers.

The prospect of flying into space excited people long before these flights became possible. Thoughts about weightlessness, about overcoming the gravity of the earth, excited the minds of not only scientists, but also science fiction writers ...

The first person to experience the state of weightlessness in free flight was, as you know, Yuri Gagarin. April 12, 1961 - the date of his historic flight - marks the beginning of a new era - space.

Everyone now knows what weightlessness is, but back in the middle of the twentieth century it was a speculative concept that existed only in theory, interesting to a narrow circle of specialists. For example, in the second edition of the TSB, the term "weightlessness" is absent (volume 29 with the letter "H" was published in 1954, three years before the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite in the USSR). Meanwhile, science fiction writers have foreseen the effect of the disappearance of gravity for a long time. Almost for the first time it was foreseen in the fantastic book "Sleep, or Astronomy of the Moon", published in Latin in the city of Frankfurt am Main in 1633. The author of this work is the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1573-1630), a staunch follower of Copernicus, who discovered three fundamental laws of planetary motion around the sun. He wrote his "Dream" while still quite young, continued to work on it for a long time, but did not have time to print it. The manuscript found in the scientist's papers was published by his son.

The fantastic story about the flight to the moon by Tycho Brahe's student, a young astronomer named Duracotus, is accompanied by extensive comments that are several times longer than the description of the journey itself and the hero's life on the moon. From this work it is clear that Kepler, albeit in a naive form, was able to provide for "overloads" human body at the start, the state of weightlessness during the flight (albeit only on one small segment) and shock absorption during the descent to the moon.

Later, Isaac Newton, in his main work The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687), based on the laws of planetary motion discovered by Kepler, developed the foundations of celestial mechanics. This made it possible to determine the speeds necessary to turn the projectile into an artificial satellite of the Earth, to fly within the solar system and exit into the infinite space of the Universe (the first, second and third cosmic velocities).

Two and a half centuries after the appearance of Keplerian's "Dream", Jules Verne presented readers with his famous lunar dilogy - "From the Earth to the Moon" (1865) and "Around the Moon" (1870).

For the time being, we will confine ourselves to talking about weightlessness. At the "neutral point", according to the writer, who repeated Kepler's hypothesis, both attraction - lunar and terrestrial - must mutually balance. As a result, the "carriage-shell" should lose all weight. This will happen due to the difference in the masses of both planets 47/52 of the entire path.

“The state of equilibrium between lunar and earthly gravity,” the writer claims, “lasted no more than an hour. And this is how the effect of weightlessness is described: “various objects, weapons, bottles, thrown and left to themselves, seemed to miraculously stay in the air ... Outstretched arms did not fall, heads swayed on their shoulders, legs did not touch the floor of the projectile ... Michel suddenly jumped up and, separating himself on some distance from the projectile, hung in the air ... ”(“ Around the Moon, ch. 8).

The works of the French novelist for many years did not go out of sight of Leo Tolstoy. Acquaintance began with the novel "Around the Moon". Tolstoy was interested in the hypothesis of a "world without gravity". The diary entry - "Read Verne" (November 17, 1873) - is accompanied by polemical notes: "Movement without gravity is unthinkable. Movement is warmth. Heat without gravity is unthinkable.”

Tolstoy was puzzled most of all by Michel Ardant's playful suggestion that if one could get rid of the fetters of gravity in terrestrial conditions, then "only an effort of the will would be enough to take off into space at one's whim."

Tolstoy did not believe in miracles. Under the fresh impression of Jules Verne's novel, he turned to the works of physics, but nowhere did he find an answer whether arbitrary movements are really possible in a state of weightlessness. The letters of N.N. Strakhov, who explained that a cat thrown out of a window makes a parabola in the air and falls to its feet. This means that "movements are possible regardless of the force of gravity." Tolstoy was not convinced either, and then Strakhov referred to the doctrine of inertia and cited excerpts from Newton's "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy".

Six years later, in 1879, Lev Nikolayevich noticed in one of his letters to A.A. Fetu: “Vern has a story “Around the Moon”. They are there at a point where there is no attraction. Is it possible to jump at this point? Knowledgeable physicists answered differently.

Apparently, the great writer never found the solution that tormented his problems. The life experience of a person accustomed to concrete thinking opposed the speculative possibility of movements in a state of weightlessness of his own free will, although, apparently, he did not deny weightlessness in itself.

Even during the life of Jules Verne, the genius of Russian science K.E. Tsiolkovsky formulated the principles of the study of world spaces with reactive instruments, outlined his thoughts on the possibility of human penetration into space, on an artificial satellite of the Earth, on the conditions of life in the absence of gravity.

“The desire for space travel was laid in me by the famous dreamer Jules Verne,” Tsiolkovsky wrote, “He awakened the brain in this direction. Desires have come. Behind the desires came the activity of the mind. Of course, it would not have led to anything if it had not met with the help of science.

The "Kaluga dreamer", cut off from scientific centers, developed the ideas of "astronomy" in the provincial wilderness, but could not make them widely publicized. This mission was entrusted to the well-known popularizer of the exact sciences, Ya.I. Perelman, one of the few enthusiasts who managed to fully appreciate the insight of an older contemporary. In 1915 he published the book Interplanetary Journeys, as premature as Tsiolkovsky's grandiose designs. A year earlier, Perelman placed in the popular magazine Nature and People (1914, No. 24) the science fiction story Breakfast in a Weightless Kitchen, written as an additional chapter to the novel Around the Moon.

The scientist corrects the writer: “Having told in detail about the life of passengers inside the flying core, Jules Verne lost sight of the fact that passengers, like objects in general, were absolutely weightless during the journey!

The fact is, - the author continues, - that, obeying the force of gravity, all bodies fall with the same speed; the force of the earth's gravity must therefore impart to all objects within the nucleus exactly the same acceleration as to the nucleus itself. And if so, then neither the passengers nor the rest of the bodies in the core should have put pressure on their supports; a dropped object could not approach the floor (that is, fall), but continued to hang in the air, water should not pour out of an overturned vessel, etc. In a word, the interior of the core was supposed to turn into a small world for the duration of the flight, completely free from gravity.

Thus, the Keplerian hypothesis of the “neutral point” is refuted. Weightlessness sets in immediately as soon as the projectile is given space velocity (at least eight kilometers per second).

Since then, many science fiction writers have been engaged in the artistic popularization of Tsiolkovsky's ideas, and among them is Alexander Belyaev, who in his novel "Jump into Nothing" pays much attention to "astronomy" and, in particular, to the problems of overcoming, as he calls them, "the two shells of the Earth » - atmospheric and terrestrial gravity at the launch of the spacecraft. According to the plot, a point on the equator was chosen for the takeoff of the ship, moreover, located on a certain hill. Here is how one of the characters in the novel explains the reasons for this choice: “It is here that the most favorable conditions for take-off exist. When a rocket takes off from the ground, it is necessary to break through a double shell: the atmosphere and gravity. The greatest gravity exists at the poles, the least - at the equator, since the Earth is somewhat flattened towards the equator. In addition, at the poles, the smallest, and at the equator, the largest centrifugal effect. Therefore, the shell of gravity at the equator is minimal. Although a body weighs one part two hundred less at the equator than at the pole, even this reduction in weight is important for a rocket: it gives a significant savings in fuel supply. Now about the atmospheric shell. The air, which we do not notice with our eyes, is an almost insurmountable obstacle to fast moving body. The faster the movement, the greater the resistance. At very high speeds, air resistance is almost as great as air resistance. solid body, - a real steel shell. This is not only a figurative expression. Meteors - stones falling from the sky - move with cosmic speed; crashing into the atmosphere, smaller meteors, heated up due to air resistance, evaporate, being deposited with the finest dust. Jules Verne's heroes, who flew out of the cannon in the projectile, should have been smashed into a cake on the bottom of the projectile in the very first instant of the shot. To avoid this sad fate, we will increase the speed of the rocket gradually. We must choose a place on the globe where the atmospheric shell has the smallest thickness. The higher above sea ​​level, the thinner the shell of the atmosphere, the easier it is, therefore, to break through, the less fuel you need to spend on this. At an altitude of six kilometers above sea level, the air density is already about half that at sea level. In addition, the flight will be directed at an inclined 12 degrees to the east, that is, in the same direction as in how the earth rotates, in order to add the speed of the earth to the speed of the rocket ... "

Fantasy is directed towards the future. Depicted by Jules Verne and other science fiction writers, the "miracles of technology" are always ahead of reality. However, nothing is impossible for science. Sooner or later, science fiction predictions come true. It is difficult to talk about a forecast calculated for ten, fifty or one hundred years. We can talk about conjectures, or rather about a rare intuition.

Without exaggeration, Jules Verne showed brilliant intuition in the lunar dilogy, depicting the Florida peninsula as the launch site for an aluminum cylindrical-conical "projectile car" with three passengers, forcing them to experience the effects of weightlessness, see the far side of the Moon, return in an elliptical orbit to Earth and fall into the Pacific Ocean , four hundred kilometers from the coast, where they are caught by an American ship.

This surprisingly coincides with well-known facts. The Apollo spacecraft launched from the US Eastern Spaceport (Cape Canaveral, Florida, indicated on the geographic map attached to the first edition of "From the Earth to the Moon").

On December 21, 1968, the Apollo 8 spacecraft was sent to the Moon with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders. They were the first people to see how the Earth, gradually decreasing, turned into one of the heavenly bodies. Three days after launch, at an altitude of about one hundred and thirty kilometers above the lunar surface, the spacecraft entered a lunar orbit. After completing eight orbits, the cosmonauts turned on the main engine and transferred the ship to the flight path to the Earth. On December 27, the cockpit entered the earth's atmosphere with the second cosmic velocity and, after aerodynamic braking, parachuted down in a given area of ​​the Pacific Ocean.

All stages of the flight to the Moon, except for the landing of the crew, were also performed by Apollo 9 (March 1969) and Apollo 10 (May 1969). Finally, in July 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft landed on the moon for the first time.

By a strange coincidence, Apollo 8, which is approximately the same size and weight as the Jules Verne projectile, circled the Moon also in the month of December and splashed down four kilometers from the point indicated by the novelist. (For comparison: the height of the Columbiad shell is 3.65 meters, weight - 5547 kilograms. The height of the Apollo capsule is 3.60 meters, weight - 5621 kilograms.)

Not only the number of participants in the flight, the start and finish places, the trajectories, the dimensions and weight of the aluminum cylindrical projectile, but also the atmospheric resistance, air regeneration and even a telescope with a five-meter diameter on the top of Longspeak in the Rocky Mountains, surprisingly similar in parameters and resolution to the one that is now installed in the Mount Palomar Observatory (California) - all this is provided for in a novel that is more than a hundred years ahead of real possibilities!

The writer's assumptions about the huge material costs that a space flight will require and possible international cooperation are also interesting. The inventiveness and efficiency of the Americans is stimulated by the initiative of the Frenchman, and the project itself came to life, because the "Cannon Club" decided to "appeal to all states with a request for financial participation."

The appeal met with the liveliest response in Russia. “Russia contributed a huge amount - 368,733 rubles. This is not surprising, given the interest of Russian society in science and the successful development achieved by astronomy in this country thanks to numerous observatories, the main of which (the Pulkovo observatory is implied) cost the state two million rubles. In total, the operation "Columbiada" was spent - according to the calculation of the "Cannon Club" - 5,446,675 dollars! The amount is huge, given the repeated devaluation of the dollar over the past hundred-plus years, but quite insignificant compared to the real cost of the Apollo program: $ 25 billion.

Great insights and brilliant conjectures were expressed in their works not only by Jules Verne, Alexander Belyaev, but also by many other science fiction writers. Some of their predictions came true, the guesses are confirmed by science, others are still waiting for their time. Perhaps all these writers slightly contradict each other, and many of their judgments are erroneous, but their great merit lies in the fact that they depicted flights in detail and reliably long before man entered space.

A number of astonishing prophecies by Jules Verne became public knowledge in his unpublished work "Paris in the 20th century", the existence of which became known a few years ago. The manuscript of the novel was found by chance by the great-grandson of the writer, and this event became a sensation.

J. Verne takes readers of the novel written in 1863 by the power of imagination to Paris in 1960 and describes in detail such things that no one knew about the invention in the first half of the 19th century: cars move along the streets of the city (although J. Verne has them do not run on gasoline, but on hydrogen - to preserve the purity of the environment), criminals are executed using the electric chair, and stacks of documents are transmitted through a device that is very reminiscent of a modern fax machine. Probably, these predictions seemed too fantastic to the publisher Etzel, or maybe he found the novel too gloomy - one way or another, but the manuscript was returned to the author and, as a result, was lost among his papers for a century and a half.

In 1863, the famous French writer Jules Verne published the first novel in the Extraordinary Journeys series, Five Weeks in a Balloon, in the Magazine for Education and Leisure. The success of the novel inspired the writer; he decided to continue to work in this "key", accompanying the romantic adventures of his heroes with increasingly skillful descriptions of the incredible, but nevertheless carefully considered scientific miracles born of his imagination. The cycle was continued by the novels Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1869), The Mysterious Island (1874), etc.

In total, Jules Verne wrote about 70 novels. In them, he predicted many scientific discoveries and inventions in a wide variety of fields, including submarines, scuba gear, television, and space flight. Jules Verne foresaw the practical application of electric motors, electric heaters, electric lamps, loudspeakers, transmission of images over a distance, electrical protection of buildings.

The remarkable works of the French writer had an important cognitive and educational effect for many generations of people. So, in one of the phrases expressed by the science fiction writer in the novel “Around the Moon” regarding the fall of a projectile on the lunar surface, the idea of ​​jet propulsion in the void was concluded, an idea subsequently developed in the theories of K.E. Tsiolkovsky. It is not surprising that the founder of astronautics repeatedly repeated: “The desire for space travel is inherent in me by Jules Verne. He awakened the work of the brain in this direction.

JOURNEY TO THE MOON

Space flight in detail, very close to real, was first described by J. Verne in the works From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Around the Moon (1870). This famous duology is an outstanding example of "seeing through time". It was created 100 years before manned flight around the moon was put into practice. But what is most striking is the amazing similarity between the fictional flight (J. Verne has the flight of the Columbiad projectile) and the real one (meaning the lunar odyssey of the Apollo 8 spacecraft, which in 1968 made the first manned flight around the moon ).

Both spacecraft - both literary and real - had a crew of three people. Both launched in December from the Florida peninsula, both went into lunar orbit (Apollo, however, made eight complete orbits around the Moon, while its fantastic "predecessor" - only one).

The Apollo flew around the moon, using rocket engines, returned to the return course. The crew of the Columbiad solved this problem in a similar way, using the reactive power of... flares. Thus, both ships, with the help of rocket engines, switched to a return trajectory in order to again splash down in the same region of the Pacific Ocean in December, and the distance between the splashdown points is only 4 km! The dimensions and mass of the two spacecraft are also almost the same: the height of the Columbiad projectile is 3.65 m, the weight is 5,547 kg; the height of the Apollo capsule is 3.60 m, the weight is 5,621 kg.

The great science fiction writer foresaw everything! Even the names of the heroes of the French writer - Barbicane, Nicole and Ardan - are consonant with the names of American astronauts - Bormann, Lovell and Anders ...

Jules Verne proved that an audacious dream based on a scientific forecast is the perpetual motion machine of mankind. Writes.

Writer and world

February 8, 1828 in the family of a hereditary French lawyer Pierre Verne was born the first-born, who was named Jules Gabriel. This boy, who was supposed to irreproachably continue the family business, dared to choose a different path in life for himself and became not just an outstanding professional writer, one of the founders of the science fiction genre, but a real "godfather" for writers and scientists - present and future - from different countries. parts of the world.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky said: “The desire for space travel is instilled in me by Jules Verne. He awakened the work of the brain in this direction.

Let's not forget the generations of readers who grew up reading Verne's books, translated into 148 languages. They also have something to thank the writer for: first of all, for the instilled understanding of how amazing, diverse and immense the world is.

We are able to know the world, but here's a miracle: the more we explore it, the more secrets and mysteries arise, the further the border of knowledge moves! So, people will go further: in breadth, depth, up. 20 thousand leagues under water, around the world in 80 days - this is not the limit, we are capable of much more.

Journey in dreams and in reality

Jules Verne - "self made man". A man of amazing performance. Just imagine: he worked from five in the morning until eight in the evening; daily rate - 24 book pages. But in addition to artistic creativity, there were also scientific monographs and articles, essays. For example, "Underwater locomotive" (1857), "Illustrated geography of France and its colonies" (1864), "Meridians and calendar" (1873). In old age, already blind, the writer continued to dictate texts. No weakness, decrepitude - the intellect, the mind are capable of dictating the will of the body, subordinating it to themselves.

But most importantly, Vern did not spend his whole life behind a desk - he traveled the world, including the seas and oceans on his yachts Saint-Michel I, Saint-Michel II and Saint-Michel III. The writer visited many countries, except, perhaps, the Russian Empire: he was prevented from landing in St. Petersburg by a strong sea storm. But a real creator can reach any continent or planet: the action of 9 of Jules Verne's 66 novels takes place in Russia.

Hero of our time

In 1863, Verne wrote the book Paris in the 20th Century, which detailed the automobile, the fax machine, and the electric chair. The publisher returned the manuscript to him, deeming the work too implausible. As a result, "Paris in the 20th century" was published only in 1994 - this is how a short-sighted book publisher can sometimes deprive readers of a real miracle and discovery.

And to this day, Vern remains the greatest prophet in the history of mankind. But unlike Count Cagliostro and Baba Vanga, he closely followed the achievements of science and consulted with scientists; Verne did not invent anything, but anticipated the direction of development of already existing technologies.

How far behind Vern left his time, coming close to us! Electric bullets from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1869), a video link from One Day of an American Journalist in 2889 (1889), a super-projectile capable of destroying everything within a radius of thousands of square meters from The Flag of the Motherland (1896).. Jules Verne described everything in the smallest detail - and they turned out to be true.

So, the launch of the lunar expedition (the novel "From the Earth to the Moon by a direct route in 97 hours and 20 minutes", published in 1865) was "carried out" by a writer from Stones Hill in Florida - this place is close to the location of the modern cosmodrome at Cape Canaveral. Or here's another: in "Five Hundred Million Begums" (1879), Verne made the German professor Schulze, an obsessed nationalist with a thirst for world domination, the main villain.

Some of Verne's theories are still waiting to be "incarnated". For example, in his novel The Floating City (1870), events unfolded on an artificial island, where the richest people on Earth created a man-made paradise for themselves. This idea is now ready to be implemented by the Seasteading Institute. The organization intends to create not even one, but several floating city-states. They will have sovereignty and exist according to their own liberal laws, which should make them extremely attractive for business. Peter Thiel, the founder of the PayPal payment system, is one of the sponsors of the project.

“Whatever I compose, whatever I invent,” wrote Jules Verne, “all this will always be below the real possibilities of man. The time will come when science will outstrip fantasy.”

The last mountain on the way

Jules Verne wrote a sequel to The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym, a book by his favorite author, Edgar Poe (The Ice Sphinx, published in 1897). And the American writer Ray Bradbury went even further: he made Verne himself, whom he deeply respected, the hero of the story “Miracles and Curiosities! Pass it on!" It turned out truthfully and meaningfully - on the ocean, Bradbury interviews Vern, putting the following thought into his mouth:

“I rebel against an existence devoid of meaning. The existence of mankind will not be meaningless, I argue, if mankind can climb this last tall mountain - space.<…>The human race must populate all the planets of all the stars. The continuous resettlement of our colonists on the most distant worlds, so that people can exist forever, will finally reveal to us the meaning of our long and often unbearably difficult path to the top.

It sounds too optimistic and bold, especially for those who live today in a society that does not think, does not believe, does not dream, and does not even really work anymore, preferring to exist monotonously, buried in smartphones and tablets invented by others - in an unloved country after boring work. Nevertheless, people continue to peer into the starry sky and wish that science would surpass their wildest dreams. And not just to wish, but to act. Thus, the American non-profit organization Inspiration Mars Foundation plans to send a manned expedition in 2018 to fly around Mars. And the Mars One project, based in the Netherlands, aims to carry out a manned expedition to Mars by 2023; Several Belarusians have also been selected to participate in the mission.

We need to once again check the calendar with the books of Jules Verne. And finally believe in yourself and others. In a meaningful life, where there is a place for romance, and discovery, and a miracle. Pass on!