Jules Verne Inventions That Came True (Pictures)-Lunar Modules

Lunar Modules

Photograph courtesy NASA

Jules Verne also wrote about what are today called lunar modules, such as the cone-shaped crew capsule atop this NASA rocket. In From the Earth to the Moon, he described "projectiles" that could be used to carry passengers to the Moon.

Verne imagined "a big gun going off, and you get enough force to break through gravity," MIT's Williams said.

Verne generally took pains to explain how his imagined inventions worked. "He's not like H.G. Wells, who makes up a substance that takes you to the moon," Williams said. Verne's "ideas about how you do things were always grounded in material realities."

(See "H.G. Wells: Nine Predictions That Have, and Haven't Come True.")

Published February 8, 2011