Literature

Early Works of Science Fiction

Early works of science fiction relied more on whimsical solutions to spaceflight. During the seventeenth century, Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moon employed a flock of swans to transport a voyager to the lunar surface. Frenchman Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) wrote space travel novels that described bottles of morning dew lifting people into the sky.

Far more serious scientific thought went into the works of two nineteenth-century space fiction writers. In 1869 American Edward Everett Hale wrote a novel called The Brick Moon. This book was the first that detailed the features and functions of the modern Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. French science fiction writer Jules Verne penned two space travel works, From the Earth to the Moon, in 1865, and, five years later, Round the Moon. In both books, Verne chronicled the adventures of explorers from post-Civil War America who take a trip to the Moon. Although the form of propulsion was unrealistic (the explorers were shot into space by a gigantic cannon), many other aspects of the stories anticipated the actual lunar missions undertaken by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the 1960s and 1970s. Verne correctly predicted everything from the phenomenon and effects of weightlessness in space to the shape of the capsule used by the Apollo astronauts. He even proved uncannily accurate in anticipating the Florida launch site, Pacific Ocean splashdown, and recovery by U.S. naval forces of the Apollo missions.

Twentieth-Century Rocket Pioneers

Verne's novels had a strong impact on the three most important rocket pioneers of the twentieth century. One of them was American Robert H. Goddard. As a boy, Goddard was so inspired by the Frenchman's tales of lunar trips that he dedicated his life to achieving spaceflight. As a young physics professor in Massachusetts, Goddard designed and constructed solid-propellant-like rockets. In 1917 the Smithsonian Institution agreed to provide funding for his high-altitude rocket tests. Two years later, Goddard wrote a paper for the Smithsonian titled "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes." This pamphlet discussed the mass required to propel objects beyond Earth's atmosphere—even to the Moon. He also theorized that liquid propellant made for a far more powerful and efficient fuel for rockets than solid propellant. Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket in 1926. Ten years later, he published the results of this historic event in his second Smithsonian paper, "Liquid-Propellant Rocket Development."

The second father of modern rocketry was Russia's Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. His works focused on liquid-propellant rockets, kerosene as a fuel, and space station design. Tsiolkovsky's Investigation of Universal Space by Means of Reactive Devices, published in 1891, proposed the use of multistage rockets for space travel. Through his science fiction and mathematical study, he laid the foundation for the Soviet Union's successes in spaceflight, which began in the 1950s.

The third great pioneer of rocket theory was the Romanian-born Hermann Oberth. Like Goddard and Tsiolkovsky, Oberth espoused the virtues of liquid-fueled rockets for space voyages. In 1923, he wrote a book called The Rocket into Planetary Space. Besides advertising the use of liquid oxygen and alcohol for rocket fuel, he also stressed the importance of using strong yet lightweight alloys for constructing launch vehicles and spacecraft. His Ways to Spaceflight, written in 1929, discussed the possibility of building large orbiting space mirrors that could transmit energy to Earth and illuminate cities at night.

There were several other key spaceflight writers and theoreticians of the early twentieth century. In 1929 Hermann Noordung of Croatia wrote The Problem of Space Travel, which discussed the engineering requirements for a space station. Eugene Sänger of Austria developed basic concepts in rock-etry and aerodynamics in his work Rocket Flight Technology, published in 1933. Sänger almost single-handedly invented the idea of an "aerospaceplane"—a direct ancestor of today's space shuttle. Germany's Fritz von Opel also contributed much to the field of rocketry. In 1929, he made the first documented flight of a rocket-powered airplane.

Von Braun, Clarke, and Beyond

In the post-World War II era, two important science fact and science fiction authors stood out. The first was the German-born Wernher von Braun. As a gifted young rocket engineer, von Braun was instrumental in building the V-2 rockets that Germany fired at Britain and Belgium late in the war. After World War II ended in 1945, he moved to the United States where he directed the design and construction of NASA's Saturn rockets, which propelled astronauts into space and to the Moon. In between these two periods in his life, von Braun penned numerous books, essays, and articles about spaceflight. In 1952 he published Prelude to Space Travel, which greatly expanded upon Noordung's research in space station development. Four years earlier, he had written The Mars Project (published in 1962). In this book, von Braun detailed the first fully comprehensive plan for a human mission to Mars. During the early 1950s, he contributed to a popular series of space-related articles in Collier's magazine.

The other key literary figure during this period was Arthur C. Clarke. In 1945 the British-born writer published a paper in Wireless World, titled "Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?" This was the first work to discuss the concept of communications satellites that stay in the same position above Earth. Such satellites made instant worldwide television, telephone, fax, e-mail, and computer services possible. In 1968 the film based upon his science fiction book 2001: A Space Odyssey captured the very mood and spirit of the space age.

Today, science fiction and fact authors continue the efforts begun by Verne, Goddard, Oberth, von Braun, and others. Through their imagination, knowledge, and words, the frontiers of space exploration are pushed forward.

SEE ALSO ARTWORK (VOLUME 1); CAREERS IN WRITING, PHOTOGRAPHY, AND FILMMAKING (VOLUME 1); CLARKE, ARTHUR C. (VOLUME 1); MARS MISSIONS (VOLUME 4); OBERTH, HERMANN (VOLUME 1); ROCKETS (VOLUME 1); SÄNGER, EUGENE (VOLUME 3); SCIENCE FICTION (VOLUME 4); TSIOLKOVSKY, KONSTANTIN (VOLUME 3); VON BRAUN, WERNHER (VOLUME 3).

Mark E. Kahn

Bibliography

Clarke, Arthur C. Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

McCurdy, Howard. Space and the American Imagination. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.

National Geographic Society. Man's Conquest of Space. Washington, DC: Author, 1968.

Noordung, Hermann. The Problem of Space Travel, eds. Ernst Stuhlinger, J. D. Hunley, and Jennifer Garland. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA History Office, 1995.

Ordway, Frederick I., and Randy Liebermann, eds. Blueprint for Space. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.

Stuhlinger, Ernst, and Frederick I. Ordway. Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space. Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing, 1994.