The idea that we might one day escape Earth’s gravity first took shape in the mind’s eye of poets, ascending aloft on the wings of a bird, horse-drawn carriages, flocks of wild geese and other similar “flights” of the imagination.
By the 17th century, writers had begun thinking about the propulsion needed to achieve this dream in much more precise and technical terms. For example, Cyrano de Bergerac dreams of a smoke-filled sphere and a vehicle “propelled by successive saltpetre fires”, a sort of strange prototype of the modern-day rocket.

It was Jules Verne who took the scientific novel to new heights. Such was his attention to detail that he even had his trajectory calculations checked. His story of three astronauts catapulted into space not far from Cape Canaveral in Florida was far ahead of its time, prefiguring the beginnings of human spaceflight one century later.

^{Last updated: April 2004}