Latest / Ridiculous History / John Wilkins Started a 17th-century Astronaut Program, Part 1: Why not aim for the Moon?

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John Wilkins Started a 17th-century Astronaut Program, Part 1: Why not aim for the Moon? · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:31
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Uh my name is Ben.
0:35
Speaker 1: I am not currently an astronaut. Just gotta get that
0:39
Speaker 1: out there in the front. What about the rest of
0:42
Speaker 1: us in the astronauts. I mean, I've always had astronautical aspirations.
0:46
Speaker 1: I'm an aspirational astronaut. I like that. Uh my name
0:50
Speaker 1: is Noel as well, by the way, I like that.
0:53
Speaker 1: No years ago, folks, just a quick peet behind the curtain, Uh, Nolan,
0:58
Speaker 1: I and one of our colleagues were talking about space
1:02
Speaker 1: Camp and no you you always wanted to go to
1:06
Speaker 1: space Camp? Right? Oh? I mean, I guess if you're
1:08
Speaker 1: gonna bring up this sore, sad memory, you know, I
1:12
Speaker 1: think we all, everybody of our generation probably grew up watching, like,
1:15
Speaker 1: you know, shows like Double There and nick Arcade, you know,
1:20
Speaker 1: or some quiz show on Nickelodeon where the ultimate prize
1:23
Speaker 1: was a trip to space Camp. That's right, You're you're
1:26
Speaker 1: so right. I forgot about that. Super producer Casey Pegram,
1:31
Speaker 1: I don't know whether we've talked about this on air.
1:34
Speaker 1: Were you were you a space camp kid. Did you
1:36
Speaker 1: want to go? Did you go? I did, in fact
1:38
Speaker 1: go to space camp in uh in Alabama, and um,
1:43
Speaker 1: it was okay, I don't I don't think you missed
1:45
Speaker 1: that much. No yet, but you know, I mean it
1:48
Speaker 1: was fun. But it lasted for like a week. Um, yeah,
1:52
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't have any like lasting, like amazing
1:55
Speaker 1: memories from it, to be honest. Well, then I guess
1:57
Speaker 1: you didn't work hard enough to get to the zero
2:00
Speaker 1: G chamber. Casey, maybe I don't know if they had
2:02
Speaker 1: that when I was there today? Was that was that
2:04
Speaker 1: a thing that they would hype up on? Yes? It was,
2:06
Speaker 1: and I clearly do not think it was an actual
2:08
Speaker 1: thing unless you can speak otherwise, ben Uh, they you know,
2:13
Speaker 1: zero G chamber would be super expensive. It would be
2:16
Speaker 1: like it would literally be uh cheaper to just have
2:21
Speaker 1: one of those inside wind tunnels, you know what I
2:24
Speaker 1: mean for indoor skydiving. But if I'm not mistaken, weren't
2:27
Speaker 1: the kids in the space Camp commercials like literally floating
2:30
Speaker 1: around and stuff. I believe you are correct. I think
2:34
Speaker 1: that's true. I remember, I mean, I know they had like,
2:35
Speaker 1: you know, the old classic gyroscope that's a you know,
2:39
Speaker 1: good old go to training thing. I guess for being
2:42
Speaker 1: in a semi waitless state. I did, though, to be fair,
2:46
Speaker 1: work at a science center for a time and I
2:50
Speaker 1: could ride the gyroscope is as much as I wanted.
2:52
Speaker 1: So nice, nice, It's different at the top, I hear. So,
2:57
Speaker 1: why are we talking about space Camp? Why we're talking
3:00
Speaker 1: about astronauts. Well, we know that space Camp was a
3:06
Speaker 1: very successful endeavor to raise awareness amongst children about the
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Speaker 1: possibility of exploring space, of of reaching beyond the bounds
3:17
Speaker 1: of Earth. Turns out, the idea of exploring space is,
3:23
Speaker 1: of course, very very old. Today's episode, which may be
3:27
Speaker 1: the first of a two parter, is about a guy
3:29
Speaker 1: who may not have heard of, who tried to launch
3:33
Speaker 1: his own space program way back in the seventeenth century.
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Speaker 1: His name John Wilkins. John Wilkins, a name that may
3:41
Speaker 1: have been largely lost to history, especially, you know, given
3:45
Speaker 1: the reputation of folks like Galileo and copernicust names that
3:49
Speaker 1: will live on. However, John Wilkins not as much of
3:52
Speaker 1: a household dame as those folks. Albert Einstein, you know
3:55
Speaker 1: the guy. You know, that guy, John Wilkins not so much,
3:58
Speaker 1: but let's give let's give you guys an introduction to
4:01
Speaker 1: this uh forgotten hero of science. Um. He was a theologian.
4:06
Speaker 1: He considered himself a natural philosopher. He was born in
4:10
Speaker 1: sixteen fourteen UM and he actually married Oliver Cromwell's youngest sister, Robina,
4:17
Speaker 1: which seems like a lot of pressure. Cromwell was not
4:20
Speaker 1: particularly friendly fellow, if I'm not mistaken. Kind of an
4:24
Speaker 1: intense dude, from from what we understand, kind of an
4:26
Speaker 1: intense dude. Uh, you're you're right. Though he was he
4:31
Speaker 1: was high up. He was a learned intellectual for the time.
4:35
Speaker 1: He was connected to society, as many learned intellectuals were
4:39
Speaker 1: in this era. Was born in sixteen fourteen. Uh. He
4:44
Speaker 1: was a polymath, and he would go on to become
4:48
Speaker 1: one of the founders of the Royal Society. He also
4:53
Speaker 1: was a writer, and in some of his books he
4:56
Speaker 1: explored the possibility of carrying human beings to the Moon.
5:02
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people in the world at this time,
5:05
Speaker 1: he believed that the Moon and the other planets in
5:08
Speaker 1: the Solar System were inhabited, and he was like, we
5:12
Speaker 1: should meet these people, Why hang out with them? Oh? Totally,
5:15
Speaker 1: And he had a really optimistic view of how this
5:17
Speaker 1: might work logistically. Uh. He envisioned a world where you
5:21
Speaker 1: could literally sail to the Moon using what he would
5:25
Speaker 1: call something I'm gonna call it this, but something along
5:28
Speaker 1: the lines of space chariots. He would prefer to orm
5:30
Speaker 1: as a flying chariot. But his notion of of of
5:33
Speaker 1: how this might work was that if you could just
5:36
Speaker 1: get twenty miles above the Earth surface, uh, then you
5:41
Speaker 1: would enter a zone where you could fly freely or
5:45
Speaker 1: sail using the space chariot through space. Breathing wouldn't be
5:49
Speaker 1: a problem, no worries. The astronauts would soon grow accustomed
5:53
Speaker 1: to this pure, literally rarefied air, the likes of which
5:58
Speaker 1: was breathed by angels, which I also I gotta I
6:02
Speaker 1: gotta say I love throughout history the kind of crossover
6:07
Speaker 1: between the idea of angels and extraterrestrials. Sure, yeah, I
6:12
Speaker 1: think we've I've mentioned this on on other shows in
6:15
Speaker 1: the past. But there's from a folklore perspective, there's this
6:20
Speaker 1: incredible tradition of phrasing the same sort of story through
6:26
Speaker 1: different cultural perspectives, Right, Like if you look at alien
6:30
Speaker 1: abduction stories in the I don't know um in the
6:34
Speaker 1: twentieth century on. They have a ton in common with
6:38
Speaker 1: the older stories of people like encountering change Lands or
6:43
Speaker 1: the Fay or you know, Rip van Winkle is pretty
6:46
Speaker 1: much a UFO story. It's just phrased in the language
6:51
Speaker 1: of the time. And it also has a weird emphasis
6:55
Speaker 1: on bowling. I think instead of getting probed by aliens,
6:58
Speaker 1: he goes bowling with these magic people who wakes up
7:01
Speaker 1: seven years later. That's exactly right. And and he you know,
7:04
Speaker 1: this all wasn't only within the conceptual realm. He did
7:07
Speaker 1: actually attempt to build flying machines with Robert Hook, a
7:12
Speaker 1: fellow enthusiast. Uh. And they would do this in the
7:14
Speaker 1: gardens of Wadham College and Oxford in the sixteen fifties.
7:19
Speaker 1: But you know, as time progressed, he began to understand
7:22
Speaker 1: a little bit more of how this stuff worked. That
7:25
Speaker 1: it was, you know, the idea of a vacuum existing
7:28
Speaker 1: in space. Uh, kind of throw a wrench in the works,
7:31
Speaker 1: at least in terms of the like magical proposition of
7:34
Speaker 1: just gliding and sort of tippy toeing around space and
7:37
Speaker 1: breathing in that angel air. Um. But he did this
7:40
Speaker 1: didn't stop him right. No, yeah, you're right, and not
7:43
Speaker 1: at all. I just I love the picture of this
7:46
Speaker 1: guy and he was Again, we kind of emphasize this enough.
7:49
Speaker 1: He was a very intelligent person. He was one of
7:52
Speaker 1: the few people who in that time who attended both
7:55
Speaker 1: Cambridge and Oxford. Like. He wasn't a blockhead, is what
7:59
Speaker 1: we're saying. Uh. He did continue in his explorations. I
8:03
Speaker 1: love the moment though, where he says, huh, maybe going
8:07
Speaker 1: to the moon is a little more complicated than I thought. Uh.
8:12
Speaker 1: He also he also had his ups and downs, and
8:15
Speaker 1: he had his ups and downs in earth life. His
8:20
Speaker 1: connections to Cromwell eventually reduced him to poverty when the
8:24
Speaker 1: when the monarchy returned, but he eventually weathered the storm
8:30
Speaker 1: and would end up as a Bishop of Chester before
8:35
Speaker 1: his demise. So nowadays, we're gonna look at some weird
8:38
Speaker 1: stuff in today's show. Nowadays, his ideas might seem really
8:42
Speaker 1: out there, but we have to understand he was one
8:47
Speaker 1: of the first people to really consider this in what
8:53
Speaker 1: at the time was a practical way. I'm really being
8:55
Speaker 1: careful with that. I don't want to dunk on the guy,
8:57
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I don't want to dunk
8:59
Speaker 1: on him yet. So it's true, we've all been dreaming
9:02
Speaker 1: about space travel for centuries and centuries and centuries. Uh.
9:07
Speaker 1: The idea of reaching out to the moon or exploring
9:12
Speaker 1: that distant surface, uh probably predates written history, and we've
9:19
Speaker 1: It's weird when you think about it, we've only traveled
9:21
Speaker 1: to space in the last century. But if you look
9:25
Speaker 1: back through the historical record, in the second century, a
9:28
Speaker 1: d True History by Lucian, which is a parody of
9:33
Speaker 1: travel tales, was already thinking, hey, what if what if
9:37
Speaker 1: people ended up on the moon? We've been thinking about
9:40
Speaker 1: it for a long, long, long time. Yeah. For example,
9:44
Speaker 1: you see it in in pop culture, or at least
9:46
Speaker 1: the earliest forms of pop culture, like the what is
9:49
Speaker 1: the case the Voyage to the Moon by I believe
9:51
Speaker 1: George Meliez that's right, and then of course the Smashing
9:54
Speaker 1: Pumpkins video that basically tonight Tonight Baby. But I mean
10:00
Speaker 1: that kind of fantastical imagery is not far off from
10:04
Speaker 1: the types of sketches that we see Wilkins doing. Like
10:07
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff like these, like space chariots,
10:09
Speaker 1: are the kinds of stuff you would think of in
10:12
Speaker 1: terms of like almost a Jules Verne approach to space travel.
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Speaker 1: You know, yeah, absolutely, And we have to remember too,
10:19
Speaker 1: in Wilkins time, there were there was this fascination with
10:25
Speaker 1: exploration in general, at least for Europeans. You know, folks
10:30
Speaker 1: were folks were very much tuned in to the earlier
10:34
Speaker 1: explorations of Christopher Columbus and Magellan and Francis Drake, their
10:40
Speaker 1: discoveries of the well, they're quote unquote discoveries of these
10:44
Speaker 1: new distant lands. So it's it's kind of like a
10:49
Speaker 1: it's like a situation where you say, Wow, their entire
10:51
Speaker 1: other continents on this planet that we didn't know about.
10:56
Speaker 1: Why stop there? What's going on in the moon. If
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Speaker 1: we can get across the Atlantic Ocean, surely we can
11:03
Speaker 1: get twenty miles into the air and then sail away
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Speaker 1: to the moon. Uh, this is this would prove to
11:11
Speaker 1: be incorrect. Certainly would be incorrect. And again, you know,
11:14
Speaker 1: we we kind of indicated that once he got the
11:17
Speaker 1: drift of the idea of a vacuum, that they sort
11:19
Speaker 1: of had to you know, recalculate a bit. But um,
11:23
Speaker 1: let's let's take it back. So the scientific advances of
11:27
Speaker 1: the Jacobean era. Um, it was an important time where
11:33
Speaker 1: you know, you did see a lot of improvement beyond
11:36
Speaker 1: of actual practical execution of science. You did have folks
11:40
Speaker 1: like Galileo making these incredible discoveries in astronomy using only
11:46
Speaker 1: relatively recently invented telescope technology that came in sixteen ten. Uh.
11:51
Speaker 1: He was able to actually pinpoint and observe these celestial
11:54
Speaker 1: bodies and much more detail uh than anyone had been
11:58
Speaker 1: able to do up to that point. And then you
12:00
Speaker 1: have the Royal physician Dr William Harvey, who found ways
12:04
Speaker 1: of exploring the human body and the human circulatory system
12:08
Speaker 1: and described how the circulation of blood around the bodies
12:12
Speaker 1: of living creatures actually worked. Now it's in six so
12:15
Speaker 1: there was there was a lot of innovation happening, things
12:19
Speaker 1: like mechanical clocks and gunpowder and magnetic compasses and telescopes.
12:24
Speaker 1: A lot of these things clearly were focused on this,
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Speaker 1: you know, absolute obsession with exploration. This is a great
12:37
Speaker 1: time for gadgets. This is like an era of amazing
12:42
Speaker 1: cool technology. We're talking mechanical clocks. So say goodbye to
12:47
Speaker 1: that candle with the nails stuck in it, which I
12:51
Speaker 1: still think was a very mcgever like cool invention. Uh.
12:54
Speaker 1: Say hello to telescope, Say hello to gunpowder, which will
12:58
Speaker 1: go on to ruin the world. Uh. And magnetic compass,
13:01
Speaker 1: which is immensely useful. All of this, all of this
13:04
Speaker 1: stuff is happening and people are feeling energized by it.
13:08
Speaker 1: There we can now say to ourselves the world is
13:13
Speaker 1: both understandable and worth understanding. We can use a critical
13:20
Speaker 1: thinking approach to answer questions, maybe more importantly, to find
13:26
Speaker 1: out which questions to ask, and then we can maybe
13:29
Speaker 1: bring about a new age for humanity overall. I mean,
13:35
Speaker 1: like I think about that all the time, you know,
13:37
Speaker 1: like history sometimes appears for the people living in it
13:41
Speaker 1: to be a time of stasis, right a time of
13:45
Speaker 1: of constant institutions, a time of constant existing inventions and
13:51
Speaker 1: social morays. But we have to remember it's eternally changing,
13:56
Speaker 1: and we're all very privileged, I would say, right now overall,
14:01
Speaker 1: to live in a time where there are already so
14:04
Speaker 1: many scientific breakthroughs. There are people as we record the
14:08
Speaker 1: podcast today, there are people right now who are doing
14:12
Speaker 1: stuff that was once relegated to the realm of science fiction.
14:15
Speaker 1: And this era in which Wilkins exists is very similar
14:21
Speaker 1: they're discovering. Like it wasn't too long ago that someone said, hey,
14:24
Speaker 1: we found a continent and people are like, oh, that's crazy,
14:28
Speaker 1: really what you do. And they're like, well, you know
14:31
Speaker 1: how maps are. We just sort of went left for
14:33
Speaker 1: a while, and we think if you go right far enough,
14:37
Speaker 1: you might end up in the same place. That is
14:39
Speaker 1: so cool, so end rant about how how cool it
14:43
Speaker 1: is to be human and to discover things. Uh, back
14:47
Speaker 1: to what you said about Galileo. So, like you said,
14:50
Speaker 1: Noel in January, he first looked at the Moon through
14:55
Speaker 1: the telescope right, which was a very new piece of technology, cheat,
15:00
Speaker 1: and he was dumbfounded. He was like, this looks like
15:04
Speaker 1: a world of some sort. And the reason you realize
15:08
Speaker 1: that is because you know, most of the time if
15:11
Speaker 1: you look at the moon with the unaided or naked eye. Sorry,
15:15
Speaker 1: off my goes think of that naked eye, I saw
15:18
Speaker 1: good naked Yeah. Okay, wait, so let's keep that part
15:25
Speaker 1: in it that it was great. So so he he
15:28
Speaker 1: looks at the moon, and if you look at the
15:30
Speaker 1: moon without the aid of a telescope, unless you have
15:34
Speaker 1: superhuman vision, you're gonna see, like, um, something that could
15:38
Speaker 1: be arguably described as a face, you're going to see
15:41
Speaker 1: a circle or a crescent. But what happens if you
15:44
Speaker 1: look at it through a telescope? Well, first of all,
15:47
Speaker 1: work to the wise. Don't look at the moon too
15:49
Speaker 1: long because it will literally burn your eyes out of
15:51
Speaker 1: your sockets. Okay, in case you didn't know, I'm obviously kidding.
15:56
Speaker 1: But no, you look through the moon with the telescope
15:58
Speaker 1: and you start to see craters, You start to see
16:00
Speaker 1: like real surface features. I mean, how cool is that
16:03
Speaker 1: that somebody just using lenses and like tubes and metal
16:08
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, craftsmanship gears, you know, was able
16:11
Speaker 1: to build a thing that would let you see that
16:15
Speaker 1: far out into space and in meaningful ways. Like literally
16:18
Speaker 1: was like, okay, what the hell are these things? They're
16:21
Speaker 1: clearly not just magical celestial space discs, Like there's whole
16:26
Speaker 1: geographical features and and perhaps they could even sustain life.
16:30
Speaker 1: Obviously they didn't have the tech to go much further
16:32
Speaker 1: than that, but it was powerful enough technology to raise
16:37
Speaker 1: some very important questions that would further the scientific exploration
16:40
Speaker 1: of these things. Yeah, well said, now, did Galileo get
16:44
Speaker 1: everything right automatically? Nobody ever does? Yeah, Yeah, I hate
16:50
Speaker 1: to see him early on. I mean, like you gotta
16:52
Speaker 1: you gotta break a few eggs, you know, and then
16:54
Speaker 1: you gotta appreciate the ability to kind of like learn
16:59
Speaker 1: what you don't know. And but but again, some of
17:01
Speaker 1: these folks would die on many hills. But I will
17:05
Speaker 1: say this about Wilkins. He was able to admit when
17:09
Speaker 1: he learned something that he was wrong about and pivoted. Yeah,
17:12
Speaker 1: that's true. That's a really good point, and it's something
17:15
Speaker 1: that is humbling for the individual, but tremendously important for
17:20
Speaker 1: society overall. I would argue, So here's what Galileo kind
17:26
Speaker 1: of got wrong in the beginning, Well, definitely got wrong.
17:29
Speaker 1: He saw he saw some of these features on the Moon,
17:32
Speaker 1: and he went, holy smokes, those are oceans, those are seeds,
17:36
Speaker 1: just like we have here on Earth. He even publishes
17:41
Speaker 1: some sketches of this in Starry Messenger. And then other people,
17:46
Speaker 1: of course, are touting astronomy, working in astronomy throughout throughout Europe,
17:53
Speaker 1: and there are various discoveries of people like Galileo and
17:57
Speaker 1: Ben Johnson sparked an intellectual flame amidst other like minded intellectuals.
18:04
Speaker 1: And again, as we said earlier, we have to remember
18:07
Speaker 1: that science and religion were still kind of commingling, and
18:11
Speaker 1: sometimes they came came to blows. So it was a
18:15
Speaker 1: natural thing. Then, whether you are an Anglican clergyman like
18:19
Speaker 1: John Wilkins, or whether you are just a just a
18:23
Speaker 1: regular Joe, it's natural to ask yourself if God made
18:27
Speaker 1: the moon, right, because God makes all things in this
18:30
Speaker 1: belief system, If God made the moon and made it
18:33
Speaker 1: a world, doesn't it naturally follow that God put intelligent life.
18:37
Speaker 1: They're just the same way that God put arguably intelligent
18:42
Speaker 1: life on Earth. That's still up for debate. I would say,
18:46
Speaker 1: And if those are, if those things exist, those beings exist,
18:51
Speaker 1: can we speak with them? The idea of the Jacobean
18:57
Speaker 1: Space Program was focus on the concept of speaking to aliens.
19:03
Speaker 1: And this is where we find John Wilkins. He's twenty
19:06
Speaker 1: four years old. He is, in the parlance of our time,
19:09
Speaker 1: crushing it. He graduated Oxford University. He published a book
19:15
Speaker 1: in sixty eight called The Discovery of a New World.
19:19
Speaker 1: On the mean m O O N E. Is that
19:23
Speaker 1: like an old English situation? What is that about? Yes?
19:26
Speaker 1: But if I had I like, I like thinking that,
19:29
Speaker 1: He always pronounced it in like a snarky the way
19:32
Speaker 1: people say, actually a cocktail parties. I always like to
19:35
Speaker 1: picture him saying the discovery of the new world in
19:38
Speaker 1: the mean mean Yeah, yeah, it sounds kind of like
19:43
Speaker 1: a cartman kind of thing. Yeah it it did, you know,
19:48
Speaker 1: I guess what Galileo was known. But he this guy
19:52
Speaker 1: had a lot of pull because he was sort of
19:53
Speaker 1: a high society guy. Um, he was had bona fides
19:57
Speaker 1: from Oxford University, and so in his discovery of a
20:01
Speaker 1: new world in the mean uh, he really made put
20:05
Speaker 1: Galileo's descriptions of the Moon as a solid uh and
20:10
Speaker 1: ultimately habitable world in front of a lot of eyeballs. Wilkins, However,
20:15
Speaker 1: it was a Copernican. Copernicus, you'll remember, believe that the
20:19
Speaker 1: Earth revolved around the Sun, that heliocentric views, the Sun
20:24
Speaker 1: being the center of of the universe um and or
20:28
Speaker 1: of whatever the known area of the universe that was
20:31
Speaker 1: being examined at the time. UM. And he suggested that
20:35
Speaker 1: not only might the Moon be something that humans could
20:40
Speaker 1: eventually attain, you know, in terms of exploration, but also
20:45
Speaker 1: that other planets might be on the table, uh to
20:48
Speaker 1: to visit and perhaps even colonized. So I mean that alone,
20:52
Speaker 1: given how little you know, functional ability to do any
20:56
Speaker 1: of these things existed pretty forward thinking and definitely still
21:01
Speaker 1: top of mind for a lot of you know, space arts. Yes, yeah, exactly.
21:06
Speaker 1: Are you kidding? Uh, We're gonna one day take a
21:10
Speaker 1: week off and we're just gonna go to space camp.
21:13
Speaker 1: We will be the oldest kids there, but we will
21:16
Speaker 1: have a lot of fun. So let's talk about John
21:18
Speaker 1: a little bit. Let's talk about John. So we said,
21:21
Speaker 1: he's born in sixteen fourteen. He's a New Year's baby,
21:24
Speaker 1: born January one, uh in Cannon's Ashby, Northamptonshire. He is
21:30
Speaker 1: a graduate of Oxford. He's ordained as a priest in
21:33
Speaker 1: the Church of England and after that he travels across
21:38
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. He goes to Germany to meet other scholars,
21:44
Speaker 1: other people who are researching this stuff, who are thinking
21:47
Speaker 1: about it. He is nowadays considered one of the founders
21:51
Speaker 1: or pre eminent voices of something known as natural theology.
21:56
Speaker 1: Natural theology is super important to everybody living to day
22:00
Speaker 1: because it was a theological practice that slowly accepted scientific accomplishments.
22:09
Speaker 1: They did not see the idea of learning and understanding
22:14
Speaker 1: the natural processes of reality as somehow heretical or anti religion,
22:20
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, seemingly he got a
22:22
Speaker 1: pass from that. I don't know if it was because
22:24
Speaker 1: of his stature within you know, society or what. Uh
22:28
Speaker 1: it's it's it's still fascinating them. Here's the thing, science fiction.
22:38
Speaker 1: It's been around for a long time, and there was
22:42
Speaker 1: contemporary science fiction that actually much like what we see today,
22:47
Speaker 1: even at times inspired some of wilkins ideas for space travel. Um.
22:53
Speaker 1: He was a ravenous consumer of science fiction, a big
22:57
Speaker 1: fan of of Johannes Kepler's Somnia or the Dream from
23:01
Speaker 1: sixteen thirty four, which actually um kind of speculated on
23:05
Speaker 1: this very thing, this idea of humans being able to
23:08
Speaker 1: make that ultimate giant leap for mankind into space and um.
23:14
Speaker 1: When actually preparing much of the uh the manuscript for
23:20
Speaker 1: his second edition of the Discovery of the Mune, Wilkins
23:26
Speaker 1: also took inspiration from Francis Godwin's story The Man in
23:30
Speaker 1: the Mune. It's also spelled I guess that was just
23:33
Speaker 1: a popular spelling of it at the time, UM, and
23:36
Speaker 1: that came out in sixteen thirty eight. There's a character
23:39
Speaker 1: in that piece named Domingo Gonzalez, who is magically transported
23:43
Speaker 1: to the Moon in wait for it, a chariot that
23:47
Speaker 1: is towed by a flock of geese. So space Yeah, no,
23:54
Speaker 1: thank you. Uh no, give me space unicorns any day.
23:59
Speaker 1: Uh uh yes, space ge sounds terrified? Did they shoot
24:02
Speaker 1: lasers out of their weird little serrated teeth rimmed mouths?
24:07
Speaker 1: I don't want to know you home, it's true, or
24:12
Speaker 1: screamed as the space keys devour your flesh. But yeah,
24:15
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century, I mean, this was the height
24:18
Speaker 1: of really out there thinking science fiction, and Wilkins believed
24:23
Speaker 1: that it would not only be possible to travel to
24:28
Speaker 1: the Moon occasionally, but that it would be possible to
24:32
Speaker 1: potentially habitate it and and colonize it and create the
24:36
Speaker 1: kinds of biodome scenarios that we're still toying with today. Um.
24:42
Speaker 1: The Moon was kind of the ultimate achievable space destination,
24:48
Speaker 1: simply because of its proximity to the Earth and and
24:51
Speaker 1: the fact that observably it seemed doable. You know, it
24:55
Speaker 1: didn't seem like you'd be close enough to the Sun
24:57
Speaker 1: to like burn up in a fire. Um, and seemed
25:00
Speaker 1: like it was something that could actually be reached, you know,
25:03
Speaker 1: and a reasonable amount of time. Right, just so, like
25:07
Speaker 1: how how League of extraordinary Gentlemen is this? Wilkins understood
25:14
Speaker 1: that Domingo Gonzalez was a fictional character. He understood that
25:19
Speaker 1: a lot of what was inspiring him was the equivalent
25:23
Speaker 1: of uh, fanciful science fiction. But he appreciated it nonetheless,
25:29
Speaker 1: and so he aimed to quote, raise up some spirits
25:34
Speaker 1: eminent for new attempts and strange inventions, and essentially get
25:39
Speaker 1: a brain trust together to figure out ways to bring
25:43
Speaker 1: the moon closer. They called it by traveling through space.
25:48
Speaker 1: And you can read quotes from his second edition of Discovery.
25:53
Speaker 1: You can also find some great articles about this. Uh
25:56
Speaker 1: we'd like to especially shout out Scientific American for their
25:59
Speaker 1: work it. You get the sense when you're reading Discovery
26:03
Speaker 1: that he knows how wild this idea is. At one
26:08
Speaker 1: point in the book, he says, I do seriously, and
26:11
Speaker 1: upon good grounds, affirm it is possible to make a
26:14
Speaker 1: flying chariot. It's kind of right, like we have space
26:17
Speaker 1: shuttles now, I guess that would be the closest analog
26:20
Speaker 1: to the chariot. From that point in Discovery, he goes
26:24
Speaker 1: on to describe and sketch out various spaceship predecessors. These
26:33
Speaker 1: mechanisms or apparatus is for flying. They're driven by manpower
26:38
Speaker 1: sometimes or they're towed by space. It's like, I think
26:45
Speaker 1: it needs to be a reverb on that quack if possible. Okay,
26:48
Speaker 1: hopefully we can achieve Okay, sy give us some yeah,
26:51
Speaker 1: give us some sci fi music every time we say that.
26:54
Speaker 1: So yeah. So he also, interestingly enough, thinks about how
27:02
Speaker 1: an engine could be made that would use the same
27:06
Speaker 1: natural principles as uh, doves and eagles. But he's specifically
27:12
Speaker 1: I think inspired by the old legends of mechanical birds. Yeah,
27:17
Speaker 1: and clearly inspired by a lot of like if you're
27:19
Speaker 1: talking about chariots, I mean, it sounds to me like
27:21
Speaker 1: he's trying to harness the power of the gods and
27:24
Speaker 1: all of this. But despite all of this kind of ludicrous,
27:27
Speaker 1: outlandish flying chariot imagery and space keys, and again, that
27:31
Speaker 1: wasn't his thing. That was from a science fiction story
27:34
Speaker 1: that he just pulled inspiration from. His methods were actually
27:38
Speaker 1: somewhat grounded in the science, at least of the time. Right,
27:42
Speaker 1: his flying chariot would technically incorporate technical details that you'd
27:48
Speaker 1: see in the designs of of ships, utilizing principles of
27:53
Speaker 1: atmospherics uh and some of the really popular kind of
27:57
Speaker 1: clockwork automata of the time, and also early experimental physics. Um.
28:04
Speaker 1: And he would ultimately kind of squash all of these
28:08
Speaker 1: disparate kind of like elements together in synthesizing a series
28:13
Speaker 1: of theories and skills that would allow him to propose
28:18
Speaker 1: something incredible. Yeah. Yeah, And I'm so inspired by this,
28:24
Speaker 1: you know, and and ridiculous historians, we hope you're inspired
28:28
Speaker 1: by this too. He is thinking through this logically, He
28:35
Speaker 1: is thinking through this as practically as he can. You know,
28:40
Speaker 1: he spends years thinking about how how this would work,
28:46
Speaker 1: like how we could conceivably do this. One of the
28:49
Speaker 1: primary tenets of his belief is his understanding of the
28:56
Speaker 1: gravitational pull of Earth, and he knows that this is
29:01
Speaker 1: what anybody traveling to space will need to escape from. Right.
29:06
Speaker 1: That's that's the first that's the first speed bump you
29:09
Speaker 1: have to get over. We have to remember, however, this
29:12
Speaker 1: was a good uh five decades before Isaac Newton had
29:17
Speaker 1: his famous series of epiphanies and revelations. So at this
29:22
Speaker 1: point where Wilkins life, he's still kind of confusing the
29:25
Speaker 1: pull of gravity with the attraction of what we mentioned earlier,
29:29
Speaker 1: Earth's magnetic field. And so with that assumption, he noticed
29:34
Speaker 1: that a magnet wouldn't attract a compass needle at a
29:39
Speaker 1: given point of separation. If he took the magnet far
29:42
Speaker 1: enough away, the compass wouldn't catch it. And that's where
29:45
Speaker 1: he got his number of twenty miles. He thought, you know,
29:49
Speaker 1: once you get twenty miles above the surface of the Earth,
29:52
Speaker 1: you're no longer close enough to the magnet. You're not
29:56
Speaker 1: subject to It's uh, it's you know why, I guess
30:01
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. So this is his initial problem to solve.
30:06
Speaker 1: This is what he tackles. His question is, if I
30:10
Speaker 1: want to get people to the Moon, what's the first
30:13
Speaker 1: thing I need to do. The answer to that is
30:15
Speaker 1: I need to get them twenty miles away from the
30:18
Speaker 1: surface of the Earth. So let me work on that first.
30:22
Speaker 1: And this is where this is where he gets into
30:26
Speaker 1: the brain and storming. First, he starts with, um, let's
30:30
Speaker 1: see you can you can see pictures of this on
30:32
Speaker 1: Atlas Obscura. He starts with this open chariot and it
30:37
Speaker 1: has wheels, and it has like this vertical rotating sail
30:42
Speaker 1: that comes out of the backrest of the of the seat.
30:45
Speaker 1: And his idea is that if they could get this
30:49
Speaker 1: rolling on its wheels and lift a couple of dudes
30:54
Speaker 1: up into space, then they could glide to a landing
30:57
Speaker 1: using that sail on the Moon with the same wheels
31:01
Speaker 1: from the chariot. I want to point out if you
31:05
Speaker 1: look at his work now, yes, we understand it seems
31:10
Speaker 1: a little weird, a little bit dr Seussian or whatever,
31:14
Speaker 1: but um, he was doing his best and he thought
31:16
Speaker 1: about the engineering right. He had a motor for this.
31:19
Speaker 1: As you said, Ben, this really was an incredible time
31:22
Speaker 1: for gadgets with things like you know, gear driven clocks
31:26
Speaker 1: and all of these various automataw that used spring driven
31:31
Speaker 1: kind of clockwork motors. Uh. And that is exactly what
31:35
Speaker 1: he envisioned as the centerpiece for his flying chariot design.
31:39
Speaker 1: UM gunpowder no less, which is another innovation that was
31:42
Speaker 1: huge at the time. UM would actually be used to
31:46
Speaker 1: rapidly wind up the machine so that the mechanism when
31:50
Speaker 1: you powered it on, would cause this large kind of
31:54
Speaker 1: explosion of energy that would then create the locomotion to
32:00
Speaker 1: drive a pair of wings resembling you know, birds on
32:04
Speaker 1: either side of the chariot. That would then allow the
32:06
Speaker 1: chariot to theoretically fly upwards UH twenty miles conceivably, which
32:14
Speaker 1: would then allow it to escape the Earth's pull. The
32:18
Speaker 1: motor could then be switched off UH and glide towards
32:21
Speaker 1: the I'm assuming he would have some sort of steering mechanism, right,
32:25
Speaker 1: and otherwise you would just kind of wander willie nilly
32:27
Speaker 1: and not have any you know, way of of navigating. Well,
32:31
Speaker 1: for Wilkins, we have to remember that the idea here
32:34
Speaker 1: is that the Moon exerts some sort of smaller level
32:40
Speaker 1: of attraction, So like, once you get far enough away
32:44
Speaker 1: from Earth, once you get to that twenty mile threshold,
32:48
Speaker 1: then you will start to be naturally pulled towards the Moon.
32:51
Speaker 1: Imagine him talking to these astronauts here, if he if
32:56
Speaker 1: he was pitching this, and you would say, okay, we're
32:58
Speaker 1: gonna get you out into space twenty miles out and
33:02
Speaker 1: then I think, based on my opinion and what I
33:06
Speaker 1: understand of the world, you'll just sort of go toward
33:09
Speaker 1: the Moon. And I hope that's right exactly fingers crossed,
33:15
Speaker 1: fingers crossed, this works out to my exacting specifications. Okay, okay, okay.
33:21
Speaker 1: We set at the top of the show thinking it
33:23
Speaker 1: might happen, but it's definitely happening. This has become a
33:26
Speaker 1: two parter, still technically a proactive two parter. We had
33:30
Speaker 1: the inkling that it was heading in that direction. Ben,
33:33
Speaker 1: you had the forethought and the presciens to to actually
33:35
Speaker 1: say it out loud, so we don't have to retroactively
33:38
Speaker 1: stemp that out. Huge thanks to super producer Casey Bagraham
33:41
Speaker 1: for putting up with us and our weird whims of
33:44
Speaker 1: two parttery, but this one did seem like it was
33:46
Speaker 1: worth it. Huge thanks to Christopher Haciota is here in spirit,
33:49
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickling the Quister. Huge, huge thanks to Eaves, Jeff
33:52
Speaker 1: Co Big big thanks to one of the stars of
33:54
Speaker 1: our personal constellation, Gabe Luizier, who will be returning on
34:00
Speaker 1: air at some point soon, so stay tuned. It also
34:03
Speaker 1: stay tuned for part two of this series, which is
34:06
Speaker 1: arriving later this week. What a ride, man, No, what
34:10
Speaker 1: a ride? I really dig this Wilkins guy. Yeah, it
34:13
Speaker 1: seems like a real mench It's a ride almost more
34:16
Speaker 1: exciting than when you first rode Space Mountain when you
34:19
Speaker 1: were a little kid. Can you imagine what that would
34:21
Speaker 1: be like now, mind Blonde, We'll see you next time, folks.
34:34
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
34:36
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
34:39
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.