>I'm sure that a century ago, space was just something we would never reach. Far from it! From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne was written in 1865, and wa

>I'm sure that a century ago, space was just something we would never reach. Far from it! From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne was written in 1865, and was a reasonable attempt at hard sci-fi. More scientifically, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published "Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices" in 1903, some 6 years after deriving his famous rocket equation; it advanced the basic concept of the space rocket, that we all take for granted today. In 1923, exactly a century ago, Hermann Julius Oberth published his book "The Rocket in Interplanetary Space", a thoroughly practical treatment in which he argues that human-rated rocket-powered space flight was not just theoretically possible but feasible and maybe even profitable.[0] So century ago, not only was space firmly established as a place we could go, but also enough groundwork had been done that it was known how we would get there. [0] https://ia800304.us.archive.org/24/items/nasa_techdoc_19720008133/19720008133.pdf https://ia800304.us.archive.org/24/items/nasa_techdoc_197200...