Jules Verne 
From the Earth to the Moon [EPUB ebook] 

Nearly a century before NASA, a visionary novelist wrote this adventure classic about an international space race. Jules Verne’s eerily prophetic fantasy unfolds at the close of the American Civil War, as three artillerymen resolve to build a gun big enough to propel a manned rocket to the moon. Enlivened by broad satire, this rollicking tale recounts the launch of three astronauts from a Florida peninsula and their return to Earth in a splash landing.