The entire idea of
traveling into space to other worlds can be given a specific date: January 7,
1610.
It was on that evening Galileo Galilei first observed the satellites of
Jupiter and realized that the planets were worlds just like our own. Until then,
the heavens were thought to be no great distance from the earth, and the sun
and the moon were thought to be the only material bodies with which we shared
the universe. Even at that, the nature of the moon, for example, was an object
of much debate: was it in fact a body like the earth? or was it something more
ethereal? The stars, while some were brighter than others, were nevertheless
thought to be at more or less all the same distance from the earth, though just
what that distance might be was a matter for discussion.
The planets were
merely a special class of bright stars that wandered among the other
“fixed” stars; at the time, the word “planet” itself simply meant nothing more than “wanderer.” Otherwise there was nothing
particularly unusual about them. It was unthinkable to the ancients that those
twinkling lights might be places that could be traveled to and only the moon
served as a destination in a rare handful of fantasies. And even it was not
regarded as something altogether physical, but rather a kind of ethereal
Never-Never Land.
Galileo’s revelation
changed all of that forever. The moon was a world as imperfect as our own, with
mountains, valleys, plains and hundreds of odd, circular ring mountains and
craters. The planets were obviously worlds like the moon and the earth. And if
they were indeed worlds like our own, did not that imply other similarities?
Would they not have landscapes and living inhabitants? Surely there would be
animal life and perhaps civilizations? Would there be great cities and mighty kingdoms
up there in the heavens? And if there were, might there not also be great
treasures? These questions were far from rhetorical. When human beings looked
skyward they no longer saw abstract points of light. They saw the infinite
possibilities of new worlds.
At the time of
Galileo’s discovery of new worlds in the sky, there were new worlds being
discovered right here on earth. Scarcely more than a century earlier the
continents of North and South America had been discovered quite by accident,
lying unsuspected and unknown on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean. By the
early 1600s, hundreds of ships and thousands of explorers, colonists, soldiers,
priests and adventurers had made the journey to these amazingly fertile, rich
and strange new lands. Now they learned that an Italian scientist had found
that the sky was full of new worlds, too. How frustrating it must have been!
The new worlds of the Americas, which could not even be seen and which existed
for the vast majority of Europeans only in the form of traveler’s tales and
evocative if imaginative charts, nevertheless could be visited by anyone
possessing the funds or courage. But now here were whole new earths—Venus,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the moon—which could be seen by anyone and even
mapped; whole new planets with unimaginable continents and riches . . . yet
there was no way to touch them! They were like a banana dangling just beyond
the reach of a monkey.
It is little wonder
that Galileo’s discoveries could not be suppressed. Their publication was
quickly followed by a flood of space travel stories: Somnium, The Man in the Moone, Voyage to the Moon, A Voyage to the
World of Cartesius, Iter Lunaire, John Daniel, Micromegas, A Voyage to the Moon
and countless others. There were poems, songs, stage plays and sermons, all
inspired by the possibility of traveling to the new worlds in the sky. Bishop
Wilkins had no personal doubts that these voyages would eventually be made. He
wrote in his Discovery of a New World (1638), “You will say there can be
no sailing thither [to the moon] . . . We have not now any Drake, or Columbus,
to undertake this voyage, or any Daedalus to invent a conveyance through the
air. I answer, though we have not, yet why may not succeeding times raise up
some spirits as eminent for new attempts, and strange inventions, as any that
were before them? . . . I do seriously, and upon good grounds affirm it
possible to make a flying-chariot . . .”
A great many writers
did their best to imagine what such a flying chariot might be like, but they
were handicapped by the limitations of the technologies available at the time.
The writers of space travel stories before the end of the 1700s were merely
groping in the dark: there simply was no method by which a human being could
leave the surface of the earth. In all the history of mankind no one had ever
left the earth any farther than they could jump.
(I should mention
here the Austrian scientist, Conrad Haas. His Kunstbuch
[1529-1556] preceded Galileo by more than half a century. The book is devoted
entirely to the science of rocketry and contains the first descriptions of the
use of multi-stage rockets, bell-shaped nozzles, delta fins and liquid fuel. One
of the illustrations in the book depicts a large rocket topped by a “flying
house,” which Haas clearly meant to carry a passenger. There is no indication,
alas, that Haas intended his rocket for spaceflight.)
The invention of the
lighter-than-air manned balloon in 1783 was a major revolution, and revelation,
in mankind’s perception of the exploration of the universe because it was not
accomplished by imaginary means but by the use of a man-made machine, a device
of science. This is the altered perception that is most important to realize:
that by means of a man-made instrumentality, employing well-understood physical
principles, it was possible to leave the earth. Therefore the problem of
traveling to the other worlds that shared the universe with the earth ought
also be surmountable by means of science and mechanics. That is, even if the
wiser heads were aware that it was unlikely that anyone would ever travel to
the moon in a balloon—hot air, hydrogen or otherwise—they were also cognizant
that the idea of traveling there somehow was no longer a matter relegated to
pure fantasy.
Yet, if traveling
into space was simply a matter of applying the right technology, what might
that technology be? Balloons? Anti-gravity? Giant cannons? These and other ideas were all suggested. But it was not until the
end of the nineteenth century that anyone with an engineering or scientific
background seriously proposed the use of rockets to propel a spacecraft. But
what about the science fiction writers? Everyone knows they’re always ahead of
the game. Did anyone writing a science fiction story come up with the idea of
using a rocket-powered spaceship before engineers and scientists did?
Well, of course! This feat is usually credited to Cyrano de Bergerac. In his satirical fantasy, Histoire Comique:
Contenant les Etats et Empire de la Lune (1657, but written 10 years
earlier), de Bergerac described the flight of a manned rocket. His hero had already
tried several methods of flying to the moon, all unsuccessful. One of them
employed a kind of box with wings powered by giant springs. This is launched
from a cliff and immediately crashes. While de Bergerac is consoling himself in
a local bar, some jokers fasten skyrockets to the box. On his next attempt, the
rockets are lit and he is launched into the sky. “The rockets at length
ceased through the exhaustion of material and, while I was thinking that I
should leave my head on the summit of a mountain, I felt (without my having
stirred) my elevation continue; and my machine, taking leave of me, fell
towards the Earth.”
Cyrano thus became
perhaps the first human second stage in astronautical history. By virtue of
some beef marrow he had rubbed over his body earlier (to relieve his bruises),
Cyrano found himself continuing on to the moon (it being a popular superstition
at that time that the moon attracted the marrow of animals).
Although de Bergerac
is often credited with the first suggestion for the use of rockets in space
travel, he truly only gets half points for doing this since he only includes
them in his list of possible means of locomotion because he believes they
sounded just as silly as all the other methods he described. One must remember that
de Bergerac was trying to come up with the most unlikely-sounding methods of
launching himself into space—that rockets were one of his choices was only a
serendipitous accident.
On the other hand, Jules Verne took rockets seriously, using them in his classic 1865 novel, From
the Earth to the Moon and its 1870 sequel, Around the Moon. Although he employed an enormous cannon to launch
his projectile (a decision he has been much derided for by those with 20/20
hindsight; however, he actually chose a cannon for very good reasons…while at the same time being perfectly aware of why such a cannon wouldn’t work for launching people; but that’s a subject for a different article),
he supplied it with rockets for steering. What makes this a real plus for Verne
is that he was the first person ever to suggest that rockets would work just as
well in a vacuum as in air. Even the New
York Times was ignorant of that fact, when it took Robert Goddard to task
for writing about moon rockets:
That Professor Goddard with his ‘chair’
in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not
know the relation of action and reaction, and of the need to have something
better than a vacuum against which to react—to say that would be absurd. Of
course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high
schools.
A number of sci fi
historians have pointed out that Verne was beat by a nose with the publication
of Achille Eyraud’s Voyage to Venus,
which was published in the same year as Verne’s novel but a few months earlier.
In his story, Eyraud correctly explains that the reaction effect that propels
his spacecraft is the same as that produced by the recoil of a gun and that it
flies in exactly the same way that a skyrocket does, although it is clear that
Eyraud does not quite understand the principles involved. His rocket is
propelled by ejecting a stream of pressurized water from a nozzle at the rear.
This is all well and good. But when one of his characters mentions that this
would require a prodigious amount of water Eyraud goes badly astray. He has his
inventor explain that the water is not lost “because the expulsion was
intercepted and deviated at a certain distance by a small paddle wheel, which
made the water fall into a basin from which it was forced again by the
pump.” Since the ejected water is recovered in a container towed behind
the spacecraft this would, of course, negate any reactive effect: the
spaceship would simply stand still.
It would appear,
finally, that the honor of describing the first unambiguous rocket-propelled
spaceship goes to American author, Elbert Perce. In his obscure 1857 novel Gulliver Joi, he describes a journey to
a hitherto-unknown planet, “Kailoo”. The spacecraft is a hollow
cylinder made of a very light substance that is nevertheless as hard as iron.
It is only just large enough to contain its single passenger. The rear of the
cylinder is sharply pointed. The cylinder is placed in a frame to which are
attached powerful steel springs. Released by a trigger, these would give the
projectile its initial velocity. In the pointed end of the spacecraft is placed
a strong, square steel box. This contains a newly invented powder. From one end
of the box extends a small, very strong tube. When the box is heated by the
“malleable flame,” a kind of perpetually burning globular mass
resembling molten iron, the powder inside ignites. “As long as a steady
heat can be obtained enough to keep it in fusion, so long a steady blast of
exceedingly powerful flame will issue from the tube of the steel box, which
tube . . .extends through the aperture at the pointed end of the
cylinder.” The exhaust can be controlled by a stop-cock.
The spaceship is
controlled by a kind of magnetic compass that automatically keeps it pointed
toward the planet Kailoo. The passenger is also equipped with a powerful
telescope. The “cabin” is just large enough to allow its passenger to
lie down within it. It is cushioned with a lining of fur with the controls
conveniently within reach.
At the time for
takeoff the inventor inserts the malleable flame and “instantly a stream
of fire issued from it, striking the rock with great violence . . . The old man
then pulled the small trigger that confined the steel springs, and propelled by
their force, and that of the flame, I shot up into the air, the long broad
flame of fire streaming behind me like the blaze of a comet.”
Once the rocketeer
found himself approaching Kailoo he “shut off the supply of flame that
propelled” him and descended to the surface.
And if all that
isn’t a perfect description of a rocketship, I don’t know what is.
