Round the Moon

This sequel picks up the instant the Baltimore Gun Club’s giant cannon fires its passengers toward the Moon. Sealed inside an aluminium projectile, Barbicane, Captain Nicholl, and the exuberant Frenchman Michel Ardan settle into the strange business of living in flight: weightlessness, dwindling air, a dog that dies aboard, and the constant temptation to peer out the ports. A near collision with a stray asteroid nudges them off course, so instead of landing they loop around the Moon and study its hidden far side by starlight. Verne works real ballistics and astronomy into the drama, anticipating problems that spaceflight would meet a century later. The travelers’ fate hangs on physics until the final pages. Free to download as a PDF and EPUB edition.