The Restricted Three-body Problem, Flight to the Moon, and Galactic Evolution

Abstract

The opening up of the Earth—Moon—Earth route, which took place right in front of our eyes, did actually start long before the first artificial satellite was launched on paper, on the draft table, in numbers crunched by fast computers. Already in 1957 V. A. Egorov published a voluminous work [5.1] containing results of an analysis of trajectories of lunar flights. In this short essay we will pause only briefly to discuss Egorov’s investigations, with the aim of demonstrating how much can be obtained with very elementary means. A detailed account of these investigations can be found in the monograph [5.2]. A popularized, but in-depth exposition of Egorov’s works is also given in V. I. Levantovskii’s book On a Rocket to the Moon [5.3].

Mephisto:...O Moon, for you — my kiss. (Spreading his dark red cape on the ground, he sits down on it, and flies away with a whir through the window, which opens widely with a noise).

A. V. Lunacharskiῐ, Foust and the City