Spaceflight, Vol. 38 No. 9 September 1996: Astronomy Selection

Moon Handbook a 21st-Century Travel Guide

Carl Koppeschaar, Moon Publications Inc., Travel Book Publishers, PO box 3040, Chico, CA 95927-3949, USA, 140pp, 1996, £ 6.95 (US$10), ISBN 1-56691-066-8.

This is a tongue-in-cheek volume which creates a fictional account to help readers imagine what it would be like to travel to the Moon in the year 2020 AD. It is organised as a travel guide, with additional information about the Moon's typography, gravity and climate weaved into an imagery sight-seeing tour. There is also a degree of background information, e.g. about the relationship between Earth and the Moon, the Moon in mythology, its history and its influence on our daily lives.

Historically, it traces the uneasy proces of human understanding of the Moon throughout the centuries, from the first Chinese would-be astronaut and his 47 firecrackers to the 1835 hoax that helped a New York City newspaper to more than double its circulation.


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