Space Pioneers by Hank Davis & Christopher Ruocchio

Author:Hank Davis & Christopher Ruocchio [Davis, Hank & Ruocchio, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781481483605
Amazon: 1481483609
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2018-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

This story was first published in February 1955, two and a half years before the first satellite was orbited, and six and a half years before the first man was put into orbit.

It is interesting to see in what ways James Gunn (who now works in an administrative position at the University of Kansas) foresaw events correctly, and in what ways he did not.

Gunn felt, as science fiction writers had always felt, that it was logical for a man to be inside the first object orbited. Actually, this proved not to be the case. All sorts of objects (including animals) were placed in orbit before the men in charge of the space programmes in either the U.S.A. or the U.S.S.R. would trust men to ride a spaceship safely.

Gunn’s final twist has a recording orbited before a man after all (and that is much more nearly correct) and he uses that recording as a device to force mankind of all nations to be willing to invest in a space programme. This was, actually, a remarkable piece of prophecy. The first orbiting vehicle, even though it was very simple, transmitted only a bleep, and did not represent a human life in danger, did arouse enough interest to bring about the spending of billions.

The space effort that resulted, however, was not a united drive aimed at an errand of mercy, but was a nationalistic push on the part of two competing nations, each determined to pull prestige-coups over the other. (This no science fiction writer foresaw.)

Gunn assumed (as all American science fiction writers did) that the American effort would be the first to succeed. He does say the U.S.S.R. announced “its space programme was already on the verge of success” but Gunn may have intended this ironically as the sort of thing the vainglorious Russians would be bound to say for propaganda reasons. He must have been surprised (as I was) when, in 1957, it was the Russians, after all, who managed to put up a satellite first.

Gunn had the centre of the effort at Cocoa, Florida, which is only fifteen miles west of Cape Canaveral (later Cape Kennedy) where the launchings eventually did take place. On the other hand, his picture of Earth as seen from space seems to envisage a planet with all its land and ocean clearly in view. As it turned out, the most prominent feature visible from space is Earth’s cloud cover and very little of its land features can be made out easily at any given moment.

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