Imagining Reality

Mercury, November/December 2004 Table of Contents

Courtesy of NASA

by Alan Jaroslovsky

When the 20th century began, no one had ever flown in an airplane. By the end of its seventh decade, humans had walked on the Moon and sent robots to the stars.

The literature of early 20th Century space exploration is fascinating. Many writers, both scientists and laymen, were transfixed by the subject. They created remarkable works of propaganda for space exploration. With the advantage of hindsight, we can note their amazing prescience as well as their naive miscalculations. In the end, we have chance to glimpse our own future by examining how the early space writers saw theirs.

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