One small step for a man...

Few people know that the space odyssey began in Paris (France) : in the morning of November, 21st, 1783, took place the first manned flight, using the then recently invented montgolfiere (hot air balloon), so making its pilot Jean François Pilatre de Rozier the first person to see the world from an airship.

The place was the gardens of a castle (Chateau de La Muette). Today, the castle disappeared, but the exact location of the take-off is still marked by a modest and rather neglected stele : I was recently able to find it, in an abandoned field stuck between a series of highways…

By coincidence, at this particular moment, the crescent Moon was standing right over it, as if to bring out the symbolism : actually the flight from Pilatre de Rozier was the very first step of a long human journey that eventually ended up with the landing on the Moon, in July 1969…

Photos: Eric Escalera - August 13th, 2021.