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I established myself in a fairly remote country house and entertained my imagination with various means of transport. Here is how I betook myself to heaven. I attached to myself a number of bottles of dew, and the heat of the sun, which attracted it, drew me so high that I finally emerged above the highest clouds. But the sun's attraction of the dew drew me upwards so rapidly that instead of approaching the Moon, as I intended, I seemed to be farther from it than when I started. I broke open some of the bottles and felt my weight overcome the attraction and bring me back towards the earth.

Cyrano de Bergerac#3

MoonFlightExperiment

About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker describes using dew bottles and solar heat to attempt flight to the Moon, but gravity and attraction altered the path.
In plain terms
I used bottles of dew and sun heat to fly to the Moon, but gravity pulled me down.
What can you take from it?
Early flight experiments relied on natural forces like heat and gravity.

Where it applies

  • early aviation
  • sci-fi adventure
  • scientific experiment

Putting it to work

  • testing flight methods
  • learning from failure

Questions to consider

  • What early ideas did you have about flight?
  • How do failures inform experiments?

Another view

The method relies on misunderstood physics of attraction.

More from Cyrano de Bergerac

  1. I had scarcely entered the room when I saw on my table an open book I had not put there. It was the works of Cardano. I did not intend to read it, but my gaze …

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  2. With my equipment, I walked toward a thatched cottage from which I saw smoke emerging. I was scarcely within pistol-shot range when I was surrounded by a large…

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  3. 'I think the Moon is a world like this one, and the Earth is its moon.' My friends greeted this with a burst of laughter. 'And maybe,' I told them, 'someone on…

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