La Vie Serait-elle Possible A Bord De Satellites Artificiels.

Offprint (extrait) from the Mémorial de l’Artillerie française, tome XXIII, 4th fascicle, 1949, issued by Gauthier-Villars in 1950 in plain orange wrappers. The author, Ernest Esclangon, is identified as a member of the Académie des Sciences and honorary director of the Paris Observatory, and the text is dated 18 August 1949.

The summary notes that the United States appeared to be pursuing artificial earth satellites with some activity, first for scientific and also, it was said, military purposes, and that such satellites might carry human observers. Esclangon says that although the goal is distant, it is of interest to examine under what conditions such observers could live aboard and whether life would be possible at all. Part one treats projectiles moving under gravitation alone, in the satellite or any other astronautical trajectory, and part two projectiles subject to outside forces (resistance of the medium, self-propulsion), with mathematical development.