88. Today in 1920s Turkey: 19 May 1928 (Flying to the Moon in a Zeppelin)

(Picture and blurb, Köroğlu, 19 May 1928, no. 7, page 5.)

English
Balloons able to go as far as the Moon will be produced soon!
Köroğlu: Come along, Ayvaz. Why don’t we, too, take a trip to this place that from afar sometimes looks like a woman’s eyebrow and sometimes like an expansive tray. Let’s see if the cost of living is high there as well.

Türkçe
Yakında Ay’a kadar gidecek balonlar yapılacakmış!
Köroğlu: Gel bakalım Ayvaz. Şu uzaktan bazen hanım kaşı bazen meydan tepsisi gibi görünen yere bir seyahat da biz edelim. Hem bakalım orada da hayat pahalılığı var mı?

Comments:
Much like the Karagöz magazines that have featured prominently in my Today in 1920s Turkey posts, Köroğlu is a journal that gets its name from a legendary hero drawn from Turkic folk traditions. And in the same way that cartoons published in Karagöz always include the character, Karagöz in them, the current publication also makes sure to incorporate the Köroğlu personage into its illustrations. In this case, a small image of two men walking up to a Zeppelin is before us. The man on the right is the one and only Köroğlu; on the left is his side-kick, Ayvaz. The two men are dressed in modern 1920s attire, wearing suits and contemporary hats. Implicating a long trip, Köroğlu is depicted carrying a luggage in one hand. Directly above the docked Zeppelin hangs their destination, a crescent moon.

The text below the image definitively and explicitly connecting the aeronautical vehicle with its improbable lunar destination. There is a title that identifies humanity’s next destination as the moon. This is followed by a quote from Köroğlu who is supposedly talking to Ayvaz as they walk together toward the Zeppelin. Here, they humorously contemplate the cost of living on the moon. The notion that there would be an economy, any conceivable standard of living, or “high cost” of living on Earth’s moon is presumptuous at best. While the author was intending to convey humor through Köroğlu’s naive musings what is perhaps most amusing to a reader of today are the pedestrian clothes worn by the soon-to-be, potential space travelers. The two men lack any sort of helmet or protective gear akin to the kinds of “space suits” we expect to see on a traveler to space who would need various supports to breath and survive within the Moon’s atmosphere which differs vastly from that of Earth’s. These fellows, expect to just step off of a Zeppelin onto the Moon like a ferry boat pulling up to a dock.

As the closest astronomical body to Earth, the moon is obviously the next frontier for human exploration and travel but only time will prove whether or not space travel was possible with Zeppelins. Of course, Zeppelins more or less became obsolete after the great Hindenburg disaster of 1937—long before the first man landed on the moon in 1969. But indeed, the promise for what the Zeppelin could achieve as a vehicle were considered to be endless in the 1920s at the height of the technology’s popularity.

(Entire page, Köroğlu, 19 May 1928, no. 7, page 5.)