De la terre à la lune: trajet direct en 97 heures 20 minutes — Résumé 🇺🇸 English
The Gun-Club’s lunar project nears completion but excitement remains high. On September 30 a telegraph arrives from Paris to President Barbicane proposing to replace the spherical projectile with a cylindrical-conical one because the sender intends to travel inside it to the Moon. Signed Michel Ardan, who announces he will depart aboard the steamship Atlanta. Barbicane is visibly shaken but controls his emotions. The message rapidly spreads through telegraph channels and newspapers, provoking disbelief, mockery, and accusations of madness in Tampa, where the idea of a man traveling inside a cannon shell is considered absurd. Only J.-T. Maston defends the proposal passionately, calling it a daring inspiration.
As public agitation grows, Barbicane cannot ignore the uproar and seeks confirmation. He sends urgent inquiries via telegraph to Liverpool shipping agents regarding the steamship Atlanta. The reply confirms that the vessel left Europe bound for Florida with a French passenger named Michel Ardan officially listed on board. This verification transforms speculation into apparent fact. Barbicane, convinced yet disturbed, halts the final casting operations of the projectile and awaits developments. Across America, newspapers amplify the story, and public imagination becomes intensely fixated on the coming arrival, turning skepticism into mass anticipation and feverish curiosity.
On October 20 the steamship Atlanta enters Tampa Bay and is immediately surrounded by a flotilla of small boats as crowds attempt to witness the arrival. Barbicane boards the ship and confronts Michel Ardan, a tall, energetic Frenchman with a flamboyant, restless demeanor and a mixture of humor and confidence. Ardan treats the extraordinary mission with casual enthusiasm, as if it were a simple excursion, and greets Barbicane with friendly familiarity. Despite Barbicane’s cautious skepticism, a mutual respect quickly develops, reinforced by the enthusiastic support of J.-T. Maston, who idolizes Ardan’s daring spirit. Ardan declares he is fully committed to the journey and insists on explaining his plans publicly.
A vast public meeting is organized under an enormous tent capable of holding hundreds of thousands of spectators. Ardan addresses the crowd in English, speaking with humor, humility, and bold conviction. He describes space travel as a natural extension of human progress, comparing it to humanity’s evolution from walking to modern transport systems. He presents the idea of a projectile as the next stage in this progression. To support his argument, he cites the enormous orbital speeds of planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, and others—showing that celestial bodies already move at extraordinary velocities, far exceeding the proposed launch speed. He dismisses fears of impossibility, suggesting that Earth itself behaves like a massive projectile in space. His energetic, imaginative reasoning, combined with his charismatic delivery, electrifies the audience and deepens global fascination with the lunar expedition.