Late Precursors

The Scientists and The Catalysts

...........In analyzing the factors that allowed the space age to begin, we can see that this remarkable human achievement was brought about not by any localized event or singular feat of human ingenuity. Rather it was an arduous and protracted process that developed slowly over an extraordinary epoch. There were however, a few events in relative modernity that were to push mankind across the threshold, thrusting us for the first time above and beyond the barrier of earthly gravity—an event that we had not previously thought to be within the bounds of human achievement. Before the first launch of an earth-orbiting satellite, the emblematic starting light for the ensuing space race, the engines of science had to be revved, and the tires of political competition had to be warmed up in order to take grip. Building off the achievements of ancient and recent visionaries, the early rocket scientists would assemble the necessary technologies to reach the dark skies far above. Simultaneously, political turmoil and ideological schisms that divided the world would manifest in the form of an intense fear and emphatic need among discordant factions to rise as the victor in a struggle for world power. This intense struggle motivated the birth of a new age which, ironically, allowed humans the first look from afar at the planet which we all share and populate as one people.

Tsiolkovsky's book introduced a groundbreaking new consideration. In this volume, he suggested that rockets were the only practical way to reach beyond Earth's atmosphere.

The Father and the Motherland

...........The first scientific consideration of rocket propulsion as a means to achieve earth orbit was conceived in the journals of one exceptional Russian schoolteacher. Amidst an age of innovation that saw the first electric light, movie projector and phonograph, as well as the first automobiles and airplanes, a solitary man, largely isolated from the technologically advancing outside world, was drafting out the first solid ideas for what would a few scores later become the first human spacecraft. In the small Russian town of Kaluga just two years before the arrival of the twentieth century, a deaf and reclusive man named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was calculating formulae for the practical use of liquid fuel rockets which could overcome earth’s gravity. Inspired by the writings of Jules Verne, Tsiolkovsky imagined his "reaction machines" (as he then called his conceptual fish shaped rockets) seeding the galaxy with human life, in an age of space stations and otherworldly colonies. Tsiolkovsky had published the first study of practical astronomical rocket science by the year 1903; titled "The Investigation of World Spaces with Reaction Machines."(Walter, 5) A variation on the reaction machines he proposed would prove to be the only means of propulsion powerful enough to hurl men into space.

...........Though this mans prophetic postulations were not initially recognized outside of his home country, he did gain a following in Russia. The newly established Soviet Union, with its interest in science and technology celebrated and published Tsiolkovsky’s writings, raising him to the status of a patron saint and awarding him a lifelong pension. He became known as "The Father of Cosmonautics"(Walter, 26) The USSR tapped this new wave of thought and became the first government to establish a serious laboratory for the study of rocketry and astronautics.(Emme, 36) This would become a precedent for the Soviet Union, which later was to accomplish several other "firsts" in their pursuit of space, to the chagrin of the American people. The allegiance of Tsiolkovsky and his followers to the Soviet Union was no doubt instrumental in that nations head-start in the space race, a factor that was to help provoke the American people to struggle to compensate later on.

Though he never built any rockets, Tsiol- kovsky produced many designs such as this.

In his later years, Tsiolkovsky was recognized for his insights. Many young engineers and scientists had picked up his studies by this time.

...........The natural aversion to the Soviets’ communist system that gripped Americans since its initial appearance became increasingly strong in the pre-space-age years. Though few Americans had any knowledge of or interest in the practical prospect of space exploration in the early years, its likelihood increased due to these uneasy feelings toward the communist power. The American citizenry and government throughout the mid-twentieth century would foster an increasing anticommunist sentiment. The communist ideals upheld by the Bolshevik party in Russia during World War I were contrary in almost every way, it seemed to many Americans, to the democratic system that the United States stood for. As a result, following the Bolshevik revolution that led to the establishment of the communist Soviet Union in the early post World War I years, America assisted counterrevolutionary "Whites" who fought the "Red" powers of the new communist order. During the same period, even closer to home, gross civil rights violations were being perpetrated against suspected communists by the American government. The pervasive attitude of fear and loathing toward the "Red Threat" continued to propagate and grow over the coming decades, particularly after the Second World War. This threat eventually constituted a fundamental challenge to the dominance of freedom and democracy the world over. One of the byproducts of this challenge would eventually prove to be an increasing interest by the U.S. government in rocketry and astronautics technologies, in response to the Soviets superiority in that field.