Since the beginning of time,man has been interested in the moon. The Romans designed a special day to show admiration and respect to the moon. They called it “Moonday”,or“Monday”,as we know it today. Later,the great mind of Leonardo daVinci studied the moon and designed a machine to carry a human to the moon.Leonardo said that one day a great machine bird would take a person to the moon and bring great honour to the home where it was born.
Four and a half centuries later,Leonardo's idea was realized. ApolloⅡtook three Americans-Collins，Aldrin，and Armstrong to the moon. The mission(任务) did fill the whole world with great surprise,as Leonardo had said it would. Numerous essays,articles,and books were written about man's first moon mission,But perhaps the most interesting story was one written before the event—over 100 years before.
In 1865,French author Jules Verne wrote a story about the first journey to the moon. His story was very similar to the 1969 Apollo II mission.
Verne's spacecraft also contained three men,two Americans and a Frenchman.The spacecraft was described as being almost the same size as ApolloⅡ. The launch(发射) site in Verne's story was also in Florida. The spacecraft in Verne's story was named the“Columbial”. The Apllo II command ship was called“Columbia”. His account of sending the spacecraft into the space could easily have been written about how ApolloⅡwas sent into the space.
Verne's story was the same as the actual event in several other aspects. The speed of Verne's spacecraft was 36000 feet per second. Apollo's was 35533 feet per second. Verne's spacecraft took 97 hours to reach the moon. Apollo's time was 103hours. Like Apollo's spacemen,Vern's spacemen took pictures of the moon's surface,relaxed on their seats,cooked with gas,and experienced weight lessness. They too came down in the Pacific and were picked up by an American warship.
What were the reasons for Jules Verne's extreme accuracy in describing an event
100 years or more before it actually occurred? He based his writings on the laws of physics and astronomy. Nineteenth-century science and the vivid Verne's imagination gave people an unbelievably accurate preview of one of the greatest event of the 20th century.
3. Leonardo da Vinci said that a great machine bird would ___
A bring great honor to the moon
B fly toward the sun
C explore the heavens
D take people to the moon
