Irons-nous dans la Lune ?
État physique de la Lune. La Lune est-elle habitée ? Étude de la haute atmosphère. Les moyens d'exploration interplanétaire. Les ballons-sondes. Les fusées, essais réalisés. L'état actuel du problème. La vie dans le vide.
A popular vulgarization published in 1932 by the Catholic house Éditions Spes, illustrated by the author and prefaced by Abbé Théophile Moreux, director of the Bourges Observatory. Henry de Graffigny (prolific scientific popularizer, science editor at L'Ouest-Éclair, and novelist of imaginary voyages since 1888) surveys in seven chapters: the Moon's physical state and habitability, high-atmosphere exploration (Piccard's balloons, sounding balloons, kites), means of reaching other worlds (Verne's cannon, rotating catapult, rocket), the history and current state of astronautical work (Goddard, Oberth, Tsiolkovski, Esnault-Pelterie, the Opel-Valier-Nebel rocket experiments of 1928-1929), and the physiological challenges of life in vacuum. The book leans explicitly on Esnault-Pelterie's L'Astronautique (1930), whose mathematical demonstration of the Earth-Moon trajectory it reproduces in extenso for a lay readership.