All Aboard the Moon Express
Yun Gee, well-known Chinese American painter, scaled the above plans for an aluminum, canvas an bamboo “Lunar Tube” which will cost the government only $10 more than World War II. So it’s all aboard the Moon Express by the shortest route, only 221,000 miles. He would start st the Earth’s surface with an aluminum structure something like the Empire State Building which would stretch up about 30 miles to where the Earth’s atmosphere ends. But, he says, “It’s not heavy and all time pushing down. It’s light and pushes up.” Tickets for the 9 1/2-day trip are not yet on sale.
February 15, 1946
All Aboard the Moon Express
New York—Yun Gee (above), well-known Chinese American painter and a teacher of philosophy as a sideline, has it all figured out. Pretty quick we’ll all be running to make the Moon special. He has scaled plans for an aluminum, canvas and bamboo “Lunar Tube” which will cost the government only $10 more than World War II. At the end of the contraption is a giant magnet which will attach it firmly to the moon after a trip at 1,000 m.p.h. lasting 9 1/2 days. That’s by the short route. About the chances of living when you get there, Yun Gee is not concerned. “I’m a philosopher as well as an engineer,” he said. “It’s only my problem to get them up there. What comes later—week that’s their lookout.”
February 15, 1946
May 29–June 4, 1960
Page 27, 31: Oddballs
Yun Gee—the moon tunnel man—is another person with a high reputation in several fields. The Chinese-born artist is the father of diamondism in painting and the inventor of four-man chess. While he was working as an engineer and draughtsman for the Sperry Gyroscope Corporation he conceived the glorious idea of tunnelling to the moon. It’s really quite simple as he tells it. You put up a lot of balloons about fifty miles up and start building a huge tube of bamboo and aluminum. At first it is hung on the balloons but as it gets out into space the air rushing up through it keeps it distended just the way the bag on an upright vacuum cleaner stays open.
Well sir, when this big tube (it’s one mile in diameter) gets out near the moon, say about 200,000 miles from the earth, you throw out a sky magnetic anchor that hooks onto the moon and there you are, cosily tied to the moon with a monstrous umbilical cord. Then you start regular plane services inside the tube, just the way cars drive between Windsor and Detroit, under the river.
I hope that’s all quite clear to you.
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(Next post on Friday: Yun Gee and the Tri-King Checker and Chess Board)
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