Travel to the Moon

Landing on the moon was a momentous event for not only Americans but for the entire world. The main topic of discussion will be whether or not human beings had the capability to put a man on the moon prior to 1969. The question that will be explored will be whether scientists in the era of the Greek and Roman’s philosophers and scientists and if they had accepted scientific testing of physical ideas and had been able to accept the failures of prior scientists, would space travel had been possible in the 16th century. A person who believed that space travel was possible prior to the first moon landing would have had to go off of the assumption that scientists and philosophers of the 17th century understood how the moon worked and how the gravitational forces worked upon the moon and Earth.

Early astronomers and Greek Philosophers believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that gravity was thought to pull all things to the center of the universe. Finally, the heavens were perfect places, they were unchanging, perfect spheres. This ended up to be proven incorrect by Astronomers such as Copernicus, Kepler, and Tycho and their challenges of the Earth or geocentric model.

Travel to the moon would have been impossible much earlier than the first landing of the moon in 1969. This is because the first telescope was not even invented until 1609 by Hans Lippershey, and the moon was first observed by telescope in 1610 by Galileo. All of these things combined would make it very difficult for a moon rocket to have been launched much earlier. Early astronomers did not have enough technology to make such advancement. Even though they had the knowledge required to make such a leap into the universe, it would have been nearly imp...

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...ss. If scientists and researchers had better utilized the method, then liquid-fuel rockets could have had the potential to be developed much earlier.

The space race between the Soviet Union and the United States, which began during the Cold War, would be the first push towards putting humans on the moon. It was not until 1957 that the Spudnik, a manmade object was the first object to orbit the Earth. This fueled the push toward exploration of the universe and the need to put a man on the moon. The launch of Spudnik proved that putting objects into space was possible and was the first step into putting humans into space. The United States finally realized their goal and placed not only a spaceship on the moon but human beings. This would not have been possible without the dedication and life’s work of many early and modern astronomers, philosophers, and scientists.