Theologian and scientist John Wilkins realized in 1640 that it would be possible to fly to the moon. And then Wilkins did something that hadn’t been done before: he designed a vehicle consistent with the principles of his time that could make the journey. Professor Allan Chapman of Oxford, who presented the story in a lecture at Gresham College in London, thinks Wilkins’ work was the first serious investigation of manned flight to the moon. You can read more in Cromwell’s moonshot: how one Jacobean scientist tried to kick off the space race in the Independent.
Of course, it wouldn’t have worked. Wilkins believed that gravity and magnetism were more or less the same thing, and that if you could reach an altitude of 20 miles, you would escape the effects of both, continuing on to sail easily to the moon. His vehicle was a flying chariot with feathered, flapping wings and gunpowder boosters.
A brief excerpt:
Although earlier philosophers and poets had written about visiting the Moon, the writings of Dr Wilkins were in an altogether different league, Professor Chapman believes. Wilkins lived in what he describes as the “honeymoon period” of scientific discovery, between the astronomical revelations of Galileo and Copernicus, who showed a universe with other, possibly habitable worlds, and the later realisation that much of space was a vacuum and therefore impassable.
Slashdot linked to the story and has an ongoing discussion.
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