
The 17​th​-Century Moon Mission That Never Got Off the Ground - Hooke
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/john-wilkins-moon-mission
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nkrisc
I sometimes feel bad for some of these forward-thinking people from the past
(relative to our time) that we can't share with them what we now know. Surely
they would be thrilled to learn what has been discovered since their death.
I'm sure future humans will feel the same about us and our absurd theories and
ideas.

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beambot
To be fair... Man has never walked on the moon in my lifetime either. I find
that sad.

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anothercomment
Thinking about it, it seems weird that there are not at least some happy
robots driving around on the Moon that people could take over for fun.

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snewk
you might think thats a fun idea, but what happens when 4chan decides to draw
a giant penis on the moon with rover tracks?

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twic
If you ever want to meet a genuine old-school Oxford don, the Allan Chapman
mentioned in this article is your man. I was lucky enough to have him as my
history of science tutor for a few weeks almost twenty years ago. He's still
roaming around the place hamming it up [1].

The article reminded me of a lovely passage from an old speech of his, also
largely about John Wilkins [2]:

"The other big thing is the method by which these new discoveries had been
made. They had not been made in studies. They were not made by the ransacking
of ancient texts. Nobody deduced the existence of Nova Scotia. These things
were discovered by the very simple process of driving a ship into them. A ship
is a form of scientific instrument."

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzwbI7g0whQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzwbI7g0whQ)

[2] [https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/print/the-
jacob...](https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/print/the-jacobean-
space-programme-wings-springs-and-gunpowder-flying-to-the-moon-from/)

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abecedarius
I'm curious how long he thought the trip might take. The distance was
accurately-enough known at the time, and it'd take decades at a walking pace
with reasonable breaks.

Another neat-sounding 17th-century work in this vein was by Huygens
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Huygens#Cosmotheoro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Huygens#Cosmotheoros)
who seems to deserve a higher profile. Unlucky in being so overshadowed by
Newton.

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tempestn
TIL (or at least confirmed) that the letter 'W' was indeed written as a
literal double-U.

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xeromal
Enjoyed the difcourfe.

