0:00

Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart

0:02

Radio. Welcome

0:27

back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank

0:29

you, as always so much for tuning

0:32

in. Uh my name is

0:35

Ben. I am not currently

0:37

an astronaut. Just gotta get that out

0:39

there in the front. What about

0:41

the rest of us in the astronauts. I mean,

0:44

I've always had astronautical aspirations.

0:46

I'm an aspirational astronaut. I

0:49

like that. Uh my name is Noel as

0:51

well, by the way, I like

0:53

that. No years ago, folks,

0:55

just a quick peet behind the curtain, Uh,

0:58

Nolan, I and one of our

1:00

colleagues were talking about space Camp

1:03

and no you you always wanted

1:05

to go to space Camp? Right? Oh? I

1:07

mean, I guess if you're gonna bring up this sore,

1:10

sad memory, you know, I think we all,

1:12

everybody of our generation probably grew up watching,

1:15

like, you know, shows like Double

1:17

There and nick Arcade, you

1:19

know, or some quiz show on

1:21

Nickelodeon where the ultimate prize was

1:23

a trip to space Camp. That's right, You're

1:26

you're so right. I forgot about that. Super

1:29

producer Casey Pegram,

1:31

I don't know whether we've talked about this on air.

1:34

Were you were you a space camp kid. Did

1:36

you want to go? Did you go? I did,

1:38

in fact go to space camp in

1:40

uh in Alabama, and um,

1:43

it was okay, I don't I don't think you missed

1:45

that much. No yet, but you know, I

1:48

mean it was fun. But it lasted for

1:50

like a week. Um,

1:52

yeah, I don't. I don't have any like lasting, like

1:54

amazing memories from it, to be honest. Well,

1:57

then I guess you didn't work hard enough to get

1:59

to the zero G chamber. Casey,

2:01

maybe I don't know if they had that when I was there today? Was

2:03

that was that a thing that they would hype up on? Yes?

2:06

It was, and I clearly do not think

2:08

it was an actual thing unless you can speak

2:10

otherwise, ben Uh, they you know,

2:13

zero G chamber would be super expensive.

2:15

It would be like it would literally be

2:18

uh cheaper to just

2:21

have one of those inside

2:23

wind tunnels, you know what I mean for indoor

2:25

skydiving. But if I'm not mistaken, weren't the kids

2:27

in the space Camp commercials like literally

2:29

floating around and stuff. I

2:32

believe you are correct. I think that's true.

2:34

I remember, I mean, I know they had like, you know, the

2:36

old classic gyroscope that's

2:38

a you know, good old go to training

2:41

thing. I guess for being in a semi waitless

2:43

state. I did, though, to

2:46

be fair, work at a science center

2:48

for a time and I could ride the

2:50

gyroscope is as much as I wanted. So nice,

2:53

nice, It's different at the top, I hear. So,

2:57

why are we talking about space Camp?

2:59

Why we're talking about astronauts.

3:02

Well, we know that

3:05

space Camp was a very successful

3:07

endeavor to raise awareness amongst

3:10

children about the possibility

3:12

of exploring space, of of reaching

3:15

beyond the bounds of Earth.

3:19

Turns out, the idea

3:21

of exploring space is, of course,

3:23

very very old. Today's

3:26

episode, which may be the first of a two

3:28

parter, is about a guy who may not

3:30

have heard of, who tried

3:32

to launch his own space program

3:35

way back in the seventeenth century. His

3:37

name John Wilkins.

3:39

John Wilkins, a name that may have been largely

3:43

lost to history, especially, you know, given

3:45

the reputation of folks like Galileo

3:48

and copernicust names that will live on. However,

3:51

John Wilkins not as much of a household

3:53

dame as those folks. Albert Einstein,

3:55

you know the guy. You know, that guy, John Wilkins

3:58

not so much, but let's give let's

4:00

give you guys an introduction to this uh

4:02

forgotten hero of science.

4:04

Um. He was a theologian. He considered

4:07

himself a natural philosopher. He

4:09

was born in sixteen fourteen UM

4:11

and he actually married Oliver

4:14

Cromwell's youngest sister,

4:16

Robina, which seems like a lot of

4:19

pressure. Cromwell was not particularly

4:21

friendly fellow, if I'm not mistaken. Kind

4:23

of an intense dude, from from what we

4:25

understand, kind of an intense dude. Uh,

4:28

you're you're right. Though he

4:30

was he was high up. He was a

4:33

learned intellectual for the time.

4:35

He was connected to society, as

4:37

many learned intellectuals were in this era.

4:40

Was born in sixteen fourteen. Uh.

4:43

He was a polymath,

4:46

and he would go on to become

4:48

one of the founders of the Royal

4:50

Society. He also

4:53

was a writer, and in some

4:55

of his books he explored

4:57

the possibility of carrying

5:00

human beings to the Moon.

5:02

Like a lot of people in the world at

5:04

this time, he believed that the Moon

5:07

and the other planets in the Solar System

5:10

were inhabited, and he was like, we

5:12

should meet these people, Why hang out with them? Oh?

5:14

Totally, And he had a really optimistic view

5:16

of how this might work logistically. Uh.

5:18

He envisioned a world where

5:21

you could literally sail to the

5:23

Moon using what he would call something

5:25

I'm gonna call it this, but something along

5:28

the lines of space chariots. He would

5:30

prefer to orm as a flying chariot. But his

5:32

notion of of of how this might

5:34

work was that if you could just get

5:36

twenty miles above

5:39

the Earth surface, uh, then you

5:41

would enter a zone where

5:43

you could fly freely or sail

5:46

using the space chariot through space.

5:48

Breathing wouldn't be a problem, no worries.

5:51

The astronauts would soon grow accustomed

5:53

to this pure, literally rarefied

5:56

air, the likes of which was breathed

5:59

by angels, which

6:01

I also I gotta I gotta say I love throughout

6:04

history the kind of crossover

6:07

between the idea of angels and extraterrestrials.

6:11

Sure, yeah, I think we've I've

6:13

mentioned this on on other shows

6:15

in the past. But there's from a folklore

6:18

perspective, there's this incredible

6:21

tradition of phrasing

6:24

the same sort of story through

6:26

different cultural perspectives,

6:29

Right, Like if you look at alien abduction stories

6:32

in the I don't know um in

6:34

the twentieth century on. They

6:36

have a ton in common with the

6:39

older stories of people like encountering

6:41

change Lands or the Fay

6:44

or you know, Rip van Winkle is

6:46

pretty much a UFO story. It's

6:48

just phrased

6:50

in the language of the time. And it

6:52

also has a weird emphasis

6:55

on bowling. I think instead of getting probed

6:57

by aliens, he goes bowling with

6:59

these magic people who wakes up seven years later.

7:02

That's exactly right. And and he you know, this all wasn't

7:05

only within the conceptual realm. He did

7:07

actually attempt to build flying

7:10

machines with Robert Hook, a fellow enthusiast.

7:13

Uh. And they would do this in the gardens of

7:15

Wadham College and Oxford in

7:17

the sixteen fifties. But you

7:19

know, as time progressed, he began to

7:21

understand a little bit more of

7:24

how this stuff worked. That it was, you know, the idea

7:26

of a vacuum existing in space. Uh,

7:29

kind of throw a wrench in the works, at

7:31

least in terms of the like magical proposition

7:34

of just gliding and sort of tippy

7:36

toeing around space and breathing

7:38

in that angel air. Um. But he

7:40

did this didn't stop him right. No, yeah,

7:42

you're right, and not at all. I just

7:44

I love the picture of this guy and he

7:47

was Again, we kind of emphasize this enough.

7:49

He was a very intelligent person. He

7:52

was one of the few people who in

7:54

that time who attended both Cambridge

7:56

and Oxford. Like. He wasn't

7:58

a blockhead, is what we're saying. Uh.

8:00

He did continue in his explorations.

8:02

I love the moment though, where he

8:05

says, huh, maybe going

8:07

to the moon is a little more

8:09

complicated than I thought. Uh.

8:12

He also he also had his ups and downs,

8:15

and he had his ups and downs in earth

8:18

life. His connections

8:21

to Cromwell eventually reduced

8:23

him to poverty when the when the monarchy

8:25

returned, but he

8:28

eventually weathered the storm and

8:31

would end up as a Bishop

8:33

of Chester before his demise.

8:36

So nowadays, we're gonna

8:38

look at some weird stuff in today's show. Nowadays,

8:40

his ideas might seem really out

8:43

there, but we have to understand

8:46

he was one of the first

8:48

people to really consider

8:51

this in what at

8:53

the time was a practical way. I'm really

8:55

being careful with that. I don't want to dunk on the guy,

8:57

you know what I mean. I don't want to dunk on him yet. So

9:00

it's true, we've all been dreaming about space

9:03

travel for centuries and centuries

9:05

and centuries. Uh. The idea

9:08

of reaching out to

9:11

the moon or exploring that distant

9:13

surface, uh probably

9:16

predates written history, and

9:18

we've It's weird when you think about it, we've only

9:20

traveled to space in the last century.

9:24

But if you look back through the historical

9:26

record, in the second century, a d

9:29

True History by Lucian,

9:32

which is a parody of travel tales, was

9:34

already thinking, hey, what if

9:37

what if people ended up on the moon? We've

9:39

been thinking about it for a long,

9:41

long, long time. Yeah.

9:44

For example, you see it in in pop culture,

9:46

or at least the earliest forms of pop culture, like

9:48

the what is the case the Voyage to the Moon by

9:51

I believe George Meliez that's

9:53

right, and then of course the Smashing Pumpkins video

9:55

that basically tonight

9:58

Tonight Baby. But I mean that kind

10:00

of fantastical imagery

10:03

is not far off from the types of sketches

10:05

that we see Wilkins doing. Like a lot of

10:07

this stuff like these, like space chariots, are

10:09

the kinds of stuff you would think of in

10:12

terms of like almost a Jules Verne approach

10:14

to space travel. You know, yeah,

10:16

absolutely, And we have to remember too, in

10:20

Wilkins time, there

10:22

were there was this fascination

10:25

with exploration in general,

10:27

at least for Europeans. You

10:29

know, folks were folks were very much

10:32

tuned in to the earlier

10:34

explorations of Christopher Columbus

10:37

and Magellan and Francis Drake,

10:39

their discoveries of the well, they're

10:42

quote unquote discoveries of these

10:44

new distant lands. So

10:47

it's it's kind of like a it's

10:49

like a situation where you say, Wow, their entire

10:51

other continents on this planet that

10:54

we didn't know about. Why stop there?

10:57

What's going on in the moon. If we can get across

11:00

the Atlantic Ocean, surely

11:03

we can get twenty miles into

11:05

the air and then sail away

11:08

to the moon. Uh, this

11:10

is this would prove to be incorrect. Certainly

11:13

would be incorrect. And again, you know, we we kind

11:15

of indicated that once he got the

11:17

drift of the idea of a vacuum, that they sort

11:19

of had to you know, recalculate

11:22

a bit. But um, let's let's take

11:24

it back. So the scientific advances

11:27

of the Jacobean era. Um,

11:31

it was an important time where

11:33

you know, you did see a lot of improvement beyond

11:36

of actual practical execution

11:38

of science. You did have folks like

11:40

Galileo making these incredible discoveries

11:43

in astronomy using only

11:46

relatively recently invented telescope

11:48

technology that came in sixteen ten.

11:51

Uh. He was able to actually pinpoint and

11:53

observe these celestial bodies and

11:55

much more detail uh than anyone

11:57

had been able to do up to that point. And then

12:00

you have the Royal physician Dr William

12:02

Harvey, who found ways of exploring

12:05

the human body and the human circulatory

12:07

system and described how the circulation

12:10

of blood around the bodies of living

12:12

creatures actually worked. Now it's in six so

12:15

there was there was a lot of innovation

12:18

happening, things like mechanical clocks

12:20

and gunpowder and magnetic

12:22

compasses and telescopes. A

12:24

lot of these things clearly were focused

12:27

on this, you know, absolute

12:30

obsession with exploration. This

12:37

is a great time for gadgets. This

12:39

is like an era of amazing cool

12:42

technology. We're talking mechanical

12:45

clocks. So say goodbye

12:47

to that candle with the nails

12:49

stuck in it, which I still think was a very

12:52

mcgever like cool invention. Uh.

12:54

Say hello to telescope, Say hello to

12:56

gunpowder, which will go on to ruin the world.

12:59

Uh. And magnetic compass, which is immensely

13:02

useful. All of this, all

13:04

of this stuff is happening and people are

13:06

feeling energized by

13:08

it. There we can now say to

13:10

ourselves the world

13:13

is both understandable and

13:15

worth understanding. We can

13:18

use a

13:20

critical thinking approach to

13:23

answer questions, maybe

13:25

more importantly, to find out which questions

13:27

to ask, and then we can maybe

13:29

bring about a new age for

13:32

humanity overall.

13:34

I mean, like I think about that all the

13:36

time, you know, like history sometimes

13:39

appears for the people living in

13:41

it to be a time of

13:43

stasis, right a time of

13:45

of constant institutions,

13:47

a time of constant existing

13:50

inventions and social morays.

13:52

But we have to remember it's

13:54

eternally changing, and we're

13:57

all very privileged, I would say,

13:59

right now overall, to live

14:01

in a time where there are

14:04

already so many scientific breakthroughs.

14:06

There are people as we record the podcast

14:09

today, there are people right now

14:11

who are doing stuff that was once relegated

14:14

to the realm of science fiction. And this era

14:17

in which Wilkins exists is

14:19

very similar they're discovering.

14:22

Like it wasn't too long ago that someone said,

14:24

hey, we found a continent and people are like, oh,

14:27

that's crazy, really what

14:29

you do. And they're like, well, you know how maps are.

14:32

We just sort of went left for a while, and

14:34

we think if you go right far enough,

14:37

you might end up in the same place. That

14:39

is so cool, so end

14:41

rant about how how cool

14:43

it is to be human and to discover

14:45

things. Uh, back to what you

14:48

said about Galileo. So, like

14:50

you said, Noel in January, he

14:53

first looked at the Moon through the

14:56

telescope right, which was

14:58

a very new piece of technology, cheat, and

15:00

he was dumbfounded. He was

15:03

like, this looks like a world

15:06

of some sort. And the reason

15:08

you realize that is because you

15:10

know, most of the time if you look at the moon with

15:12

the unaided or naked eye.

15:15

Sorry, off my goes think of that naked eye,

15:17

I saw good naked

15:22

Yeah. Okay, wait,

15:24

so let's keep that part in it that it was great. So

15:27

so he he looks at the moon, and

15:29

if you look at the moon without

15:31

the aid of a telescope, unless you

15:34

have superhuman vision, you're gonna

15:36

see, like, um, something that

15:38

could be arguably described as a face, you're

15:40

going to see a circle or a crescent.

15:43

But what happens if you look at it through

15:45

a telescope? Well, first of all, work

15:47

to the wise. Don't look at the moon too long because

15:49

it will literally burn your eyes out of

15:51

your sockets. Okay, in

15:53

case you didn't know, I'm obviously kidding.

15:56

But no, you look through the moon with the telescope

15:58

and you start to see craters, You start to see like

16:00

real surface features. I mean, how

16:02

cool is that that somebody just using

16:05

lenses and like tubes

16:07

and metal and uh, you know, craftsmanship

16:10

gears, you know, was able to build

16:12

a thing that would let you see that

16:15

far out into space and in

16:17

meaningful ways. Like literally was like, okay,

16:20

what the hell are these things? They're clearly not

16:22

just magical celestial

16:24

space discs, Like there's whole geographical

16:27

features and and perhaps they could even sustain

16:30

life. Obviously they didn't have the tech to go much

16:32

further than that, but it

16:34

was powerful enough technology

16:36

to raise some very important questions

16:38

that would further the scientific exploration

16:40

of these things. Yeah, well said, now,

16:43

did Galileo get everything right automatically?

16:46

Nobody ever does? Yeah,

16:49

Yeah, I hate to see him early on. I mean, like you

16:52

gotta you gotta break a few eggs, you know, and

16:54

then you gotta appreciate the ability

16:57

to kind of like learn what you

16:59

don't know. And but but again, some of these folks

17:02

would die on many hills.

17:05

But I will say this about Wilkins. He

17:08

was able to admit when he learned something

17:10

that he was wrong about and pivoted. Yeah,

17:12

that's true. That's a really good point, and it's

17:15

something that is humbling

17:17

for the individual, but tremendously

17:19

important for society

17:21

overall. I would argue, So

17:25

here's what Galileo kind of got wrong

17:27

in the beginning, Well, definitely got wrong. He

17:29

saw he saw some of these features

17:32

on the Moon, and he went, holy smokes,

17:34

those are oceans, those are seeds,

17:36

just like we have here on Earth.

17:39

He even publishes some sketches

17:42

of this in Starry

17:44

Messenger. And then other people,

17:46

of course, are touting

17:49

astronomy, working in astronomy

17:51

throughout throughout Europe, and there

17:54

are various discoveries of people like Galileo

17:57

and Ben Johnson sparked an

17:59

intellectual flame amidst other like minded

18:02

intellectuals. And again,

18:05

as we said earlier, we have to remember that

18:08

science and religion were still kind of commingling,

18:11

and sometimes they came came

18:13

to blows. So it was

18:15

a natural thing. Then, whether you are an Anglican

18:18

clergyman like John Wilkins,

18:20

or whether you are just a

18:23

just a regular Joe, it's natural to ask yourself

18:26

if God made the moon,

18:28

right, because God makes all things in this belief system,

18:31

If God made the moon and made

18:33

it a world, doesn't it naturally

18:35

follow that God put intelligent life.

18:37

They're just the same way

18:40

that God put arguably intelligent

18:42

life on Earth. That's still up

18:45

for debate. I would say, And if those

18:47

are, if those things exist, those

18:49

beings exist, can we speak

18:53

with them? The idea

18:55

of the Jacobean Space Program

18:58

was focus on the

19:00

concept of speaking to aliens.

19:03

And this is where we find John Wilkins.

19:05

He's twenty four years old. He is,

19:07

in the parlance of our time, crushing

19:10

it. He graduated Oxford

19:12

University. He published a

19:14

book in sixty eight called

19:17

The Discovery of a New World. On

19:19

the mean m

19:21

O O N E. Is that like

19:23

an old English situation? What is that about?

19:26

Yes? But if I had I like, I

19:28

like thinking that, He always pronounced

19:30

it in like a snarky the

19:32

way people say, actually a cocktail

19:34

parties. I always like to picture him saying the

19:37

discovery of the new world in the mean

19:39

mean Yeah, yeah,

19:42

it sounds kind of like a cartman kind

19:44

of thing. Yeah it

19:46

it did, you know, I guess

19:48

what Galileo was known. But

19:51

he this guy had a lot of pull because

19:53

he was sort of a high society guy. Um,

19:55

he was had bona fides from Oxford

19:57

University, and so in his discovery

20:00

of a new world in the mean uh,

20:03

he really made put

20:05

Galileo's descriptions of the Moon as

20:08

a solid uh and ultimately

20:11

habitable world in front of a lot of eyeballs.

20:14

Wilkins, However, it was a Copernican.

20:17

Copernicus, you'll remember, believe

20:19

that the Earth revolved around

20:21

the Sun, that heliocentric views,

20:24

the Sun being the center of

20:26

of the universe um and

20:28

or of whatever the known area of the

20:30

universe that was being examined at the time. UM.

20:33

And he suggested that

20:35

not only might the Moon be

20:38

something that humans could eventually

20:41

attain, you know, in terms of exploration,

20:44

but also that other planets might

20:46

be on the table, uh to to visit

20:49

and perhaps even colonized. So I mean

20:51

that alone, given how little

20:54

you know, functional ability to do

20:56

any of these things existed pretty

20:58

forward thinking and definitely

21:00

still top of mind for a

21:02

lot of you know, space arts. Yes,

21:05

yeah, exactly. Are you kidding? Uh,

21:08

We're gonna one day take

21:10

a week off and we're just gonna go to space

21:12

camp. We will be the oldest kids

21:15

there, but we will have a lot of fun.

21:17

So let's talk about John a little bit. Let's talk

21:19

about John. So we said, he's born in sixteen

21:22

fourteen. He's a New Year's baby, born January

21:25

one, uh in Cannon's

21:27

Ashby, Northamptonshire. He

21:29

is a graduate of Oxford.

21:32

He's ordained as a priest in the Church of

21:34

England and after

21:37

that he travels across the United

21:39

Kingdom. He goes to Germany

21:41

to meet other scholars,

21:44

other people who are researching this

21:46

stuff, who are thinking about it. He

21:48

is nowadays considered one of

21:50

the founders or pre eminent voices

21:53

of something known as natural theology.

21:56

Natural theology is super important

21:58

to everybody living to day

22:00

because it was a theological practice

22:03

that slowly accepted

22:06

scientific accomplishments. They

22:09

did not see the idea

22:11

of learning and understanding

22:14

the natural processes of reality

22:17

as somehow heretical or anti

22:19

religion, you know what I mean. Yeah, seemingly

22:22

he got a pass from that. I don't know if it was because

22:24

of his stature within you know,

22:27

society or what. Uh it's

22:29

it's it's still fascinating them.

22:35

Here's the thing, science

22:37

fiction. It's been around for

22:40

a long time, and there was contemporary

22:42

science fiction that actually

22:45

much like what we see today, even at

22:48

times inspired some

22:50

of wilkins ideas for space travel.

22:52

Um. He was a ravenous

22:55

consumer of science fiction, a big

22:57

fan of of Johannes Kepler's Somnia

23:00

or the Dream from sixteen thirty four,

23:02

which actually um kind of speculated

23:05

on this very thing, this idea of humans

23:07

being able to make that ultimate giant

23:10

leap for mankind into space and

23:12

um. When actually

23:15

preparing much of the uh

23:17

the manuscript for

23:20

his second edition of the

23:22

Discovery of the Mune, Wilkins

23:26

also took inspiration from Francis Godwin's

23:28

story The Man in the

23:31

Mune. It's also spelled I guess

23:33

that was just a popular spelling of it at the time,

23:35

UM, and that came out in sixteen

23:37

thirty eight. There's a character in that

23:39

piece named Domingo Gonzalez,

23:42

who is magically transported to the

23:44

Moon in wait for it, a chariot

23:47

that is towed by a flock of

23:49

geese. So space

23:54

Yeah, no, thank you. Uh no,

23:57

give me space unicorns any

23:59

day. Uh uh yes, space ge sounds

24:01

terrified? Did they shoot lasers out of their weird

24:03

little serrated teeth

24:06

rimmed mouths? I don't want to

24:08

know you

24:10

home, it's true, or screamed

24:12

as the space keys devour your flesh.

24:15

But yeah, in the seventeenth century, I mean,

24:17

this was the height of really

24:19

out there thinking science fiction,

24:21

and Wilkins believed that it

24:24

would not only be possible

24:27

to travel to the Moon occasionally,

24:30

but that it would be possible to

24:32

potentially habitate it

24:34

and and colonize it and create the kinds

24:37

of biodome scenarios

24:39

that we're still toying with today.

24:41

Um. The Moon was kind of

24:43

the ultimate achievable

24:46

space destination, simply

24:48

because of its proximity to the Earth

24:51

and and the fact that observably it

24:53

seemed doable. You know, it didn't seem like

24:55

you'd be close enough to the Sun to like burn

24:58

up in a fire. Um, and seemed

25:00

like it was something that could actually be reached,

25:03

you know, and a reasonable amount of time.

25:05

Right, just so,

25:07

like how how League of extraordinary

25:09

Gentlemen is this? Wilkins

25:12

understood that Domingo

25:16

Gonzalez was a fictional character. He understood

25:19

that a lot of what was inspiring him

25:21

was the equivalent of uh,

25:24

fanciful science fiction. But

25:27

he appreciated it nonetheless,

25:29

and so he aimed to

25:32

quote, raise up some spirits

25:34

eminent for new attempts and strange

25:37

inventions, and essentially get

25:39

a brain trust together to

25:41

figure out ways to bring

25:43

the moon closer. They called it by

25:45

traveling through space. And

25:48

you can read quotes from

25:51

his second edition of Discovery. You

25:53

can also find some great articles about

25:55

this. Uh we'd like to especially shout out

25:58

Scientific American for their work it. You

26:00

get the sense when you're reading Discovery

26:03

that he knows how wild

26:05

this idea is. At

26:07

one point in the book, he says, I do

26:09

seriously, and upon good grounds,

26:12

affirm it is possible to make a flying

26:15

chariot. It's kind of right, like

26:17

we have space shuttles now, I guess that would

26:19

be the closest analog to the chariot. From

26:22

that point in Discovery, he

26:24

goes on to describe

26:27

and sketch out various

26:30

spaceship predecessors.

26:32

These mechanisms or apparatus is

26:35

for flying. They're driven by

26:37

manpower sometimes or they're

26:39

towed by space. It's

26:44

like, I think it needs to be a reverb on that quack

26:47

if possible. Okay, hopefully we can achieve Okay,

26:50

sy give us some yeah, give us some sci fi

26:52

music every time we say that.

26:54

So yeah. So he

26:57

also, interestingly enough, thinks

27:00

about how an

27:03

engine could be made that

27:05

would use the same natural

27:07

principles as uh,

27:09

doves and eagles. But he's specifically

27:12

I think inspired by the old

27:14

legends of mechanical birds. Yeah,

27:17

and clearly inspired by a lot of like

27:19

if you're talking about chariots, I mean, it sounds to me

27:21

like he's trying to harness the power of the gods

27:24

and all of this. But despite all

27:26

of this kind of ludicrous, outlandish

27:28

flying chariot imagery and space

27:31

keys, and again, that wasn't his thing. That was from a science

27:33

fiction story that he just pulled inspiration

27:35

from. His methods were

27:37

actually somewhat grounded in

27:39

the science, at least of the time.

27:42

Right, his flying chariot would

27:45

technically incorporate technical

27:47

details that you'd see in the

27:49

designs of of ships, utilizing

27:52

principles of atmospherics uh

27:54

and some of the really popular kind

27:56

of clockwork automata of

27:58

the time, and also early

28:01

experimental physics.

28:03

Um. And he would

28:06

ultimately kind of squash all of

28:08

these disparate kind of like elements

28:10

together in synthesizing

28:13

a series of theories and

28:15

skills that would allow him to propose

28:18

something incredible.

28:20

Yeah. Yeah, And I'm so inspired

28:23

by this, you know, and and ridiculous

28:25

historians, we hope you're inspired

28:28

by this too. He

28:31

is thinking through this logically,

28:35

He is thinking through this as practically

28:38

as he can. You know, he

28:41

spends years thinking

28:43

about how how this would

28:45

work, like how we could conceivably

28:48

do this. One of the primary

28:50

tenets of his belief is

28:53

his understanding of

28:55

the gravitational pull of

28:58

Earth, and he knows that

29:01

this is what anybody

29:03

traveling to space will need to escape

29:05

from. Right. That's that's the first that's

29:08

the first speed bump you have to get over. We

29:10

have to remember, however, this was a good uh

29:13

five decades before Isaac Newton

29:16

had his famous series

29:18

of epiphanies and revelations.

29:20

So at this point where Wilkins

29:23

life, he's still kind of confusing the pull

29:25

of gravity with the attraction

29:27

of what we mentioned earlier, Earth's magnetic

29:30

field. And so with that assumption, he

29:33

noticed that a magnet wouldn't

29:36

attract a compass needle at

29:39

a given point of separation. If

29:41

he took the magnet far enough away, the

29:43

compass wouldn't catch it. And that's where

29:45

he got his number of twenty

29:47

miles. He thought, you know, once you get twenty

29:50

miles above the surface of the Earth,

29:52

you're no longer close

29:55

enough to the magnet. You're not subject

29:57

to It's uh, it's you know why,

30:00

I guess exactly exactly. So

30:02

this is his initial

30:05

problem to solve. This is what he tackles.

30:07

His question is, if

30:09

I want to get people to the Moon,

30:12

what's the first thing I need to do. The answer

30:14

to that is I need to get them twenty

30:17

miles away from the surface of the Earth.

30:20

So let me work on that first. And

30:23

this is where this is where

30:25

he gets into the brain and storming. First,

30:28

he starts with, um, let's see

30:30

you can you can see pictures of this on Atlas

30:32

Obscura. He starts with this

30:34

open chariot and

30:37

it has wheels, and it has like

30:39

this vertical rotating

30:41

sail that comes out of the backrest

30:44

of the of the seat. And his

30:46

idea is that if they could

30:48

get this rolling on its wheels

30:51

and lift a couple of dudes

30:54

up into space, then they could glide

30:56

to a landing using that sail on

30:59

the Moon with the same wheels from

31:01

the chariot. I want

31:03

to point out if you look at his

31:06

work now, yes, we

31:08

understand it seems a little

31:10

weird, a little bit dr Seussian

31:13

or whatever, but um, he was doing

31:15

his best and he thought about the engineering

31:17

right. He had a motor for this. As you said,

31:19

Ben, this really was an incredible

31:22

time for gadgets with things like you

31:24

know, gear driven clocks

31:26

and all of these various automataw

31:29

that used spring driven kind

31:31

of clockwork motors. Uh.

31:33

And that is exactly what he envisioned

31:36

as the centerpiece for his flying chariot

31:38

design. UM gunpowder

31:40

no less, which is another innovation that was huge

31:43

at the time. UM would actually be used

31:45

to rapidly wind up the machine

31:48

so that the mechanism when you powered

31:51

it on, would cause this

31:53

large kind of explosion of

31:55

energy that would then create the

31:59

locomotion to drive a pair

32:01

of wings resembling

32:03

you know, birds on either side of the chariot.

32:06

That would then allow the chariot to theoretically

32:08

fly upwards UH twenty

32:11

miles conceivably, which

32:14

would then allow it to escape the Earth's

32:17

pull. The motor could then be switched

32:19

off UH and glide towards

32:21

the I'm assuming he would have some sort

32:23

of steering mechanism, right, and otherwise you

32:25

would just kind of wander willie nilly

32:27

and not have any you know, way of

32:29

of navigating. Well, for Wilkins, we

32:32

have to remember that the idea here

32:34

is that the Moon exerts

32:37

some sort of smaller level

32:40

of attraction, So like, once

32:42

you get far enough away from

32:44

Earth, once you get to that twenty mile threshold,

32:48

then you will start to be naturally pulled

32:50

towards the Moon. Imagine him

32:52

talking to these astronauts

32:55

here, if he if he was pitching this, and you would

32:57

say, okay, we're gonna get you out into space

33:00

twenty miles out and then I

33:02

think, based on my opinion

33:05

and what I understand of the world, you'll

33:07

just sort of go toward the

33:09

Moon. And I hope that's right

33:13

exactly fingers crossed,

33:15

fingers crossed, this works out

33:18

to my exacting specifications.

33:20

Okay, okay, okay. We set at the top of the show

33:23

thinking it might happen, but it's definitely happening.

33:25

This has become a two parter, still

33:27

technically a proactive two

33:29

parter. We had the inkling that it was heading

33:32

in that direction. Ben, you had the forethought

33:34

and the presciens to to actually say it out

33:36

loud, so we don't have to retroactively stemp

33:38

that out. Huge thanks to super producer

33:40

Casey Bagraham for putting up with us and

33:42

our weird whims of two parttery,

33:45

but this one did seem like it was worth it. Huge thanks

33:47

to Christopher Haciota is here in spirit, Jonathan

33:49

Strickling the Quister. Huge, huge thanks

33:51

to Eaves, Jeff Co Big big thanks to

33:53

one of the stars of our personal constellation,

33:56

Gabe Luizier, who will be returning

33:59

on air at some point soon, so

34:01

stay tuned. It also stay tuned for

34:04

part two of this series, which

34:06

is arriving later this week.

34:08

What a ride, man, No, what a ride?

34:11

I really dig this Wilkins guy. Yeah,

34:13

it seems like a real mench It's a ride

34:16

almost more exciting than when you first rode

34:18

Space Mountain when you were a little kid. Can you

34:20

imagine what that would be like now, mind

34:22

Blonde, We'll see you next time, folks.

34:34

For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the

34:36

I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

34:39

you listen to your favorite shows.