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Variant, v. 1, issue 3, September 1947

Page 33

Only a trip to Venus will answer the questions, and it is to Venus rather than to Mars that I think the first interplanetary ships could set their course. Since Venus is nearly the size of earth, and since it has more of an atmosphere than has Mars, Venus presents more promise of interesting developments than does Mars. However, to be realistic about it, we must remember that spectroscopic observations to date give no reason to be optimistic concerning Venus. Up to now the atmosphere of Venus has been considered to be strictly poison. However, that's not the final verdict yet.
In fiction the standard purposes of space travel have been exploration, colonization, and exploitation, copying in essence the colonial period which followed Columbus' trip. I fear that this highly romantic outlook is not due to be realized for quite a long timel The sheer dangers and difficulties of space travel will make it something for but a chosen few. It's not a matter of throwing together a sailing ship out of some old lumber and getting together a crew of men, as it used to be. With space travel it's a business of riding through a deadly vacuum in a little bubble of metal driven by highly unstable and explosive forces, controlled by delicate pieces of machinery, the failure of which means instant extinction. And life-rafts don't work in space.
As for mining--a favorite occupation of fictional rocketeers--I can't think of anything mineable which is valuable enough to pay for the frightful cost of a space ship. And it seems highly unlikely that our Captain Futures will discover asteroids made of solid uranium.
However, to prove that I am not a complete pessimist, I will admit that these remarks are based on present inflated prices, and that it is likely that the cost of a space ship will go down in five hundred years or so, making the exploits of our future rocketeers a bit more practical.
In fact, upon considering the development of the modern battleship since the time of the civil war, I think I'll reduce that five hundred years to one hundred.
In order to appreciate the magnitude of the problems facing space travel, we must first consider the means of propulsion at hand. This is the core, the nucleus of the interplanetary travel problem. For the regions between the planets possess one important property which makes travel in those regions different from anything as yet experienced. There is no air there.
This means that the method of propulsion used must require no ground to push against, no air or other fluid to buoy up the vessel, no winds to blow against sails, no medium for a propellor to operate on.
Of course we need not even consider the baloons and air-born sailboats used by early fiction writers for their trips to the moon. We need not spend more than a moment considering Jules Verne's projectile, for an easy calculation discovers that to attain the escape velocity of seven miles per second with a cannon one thousand feet long requires an acceleration of approximately 21,999 times the force of gravity. A proximity fuze could stand it, but it is unlikely that a human being could be recognized after going through the process.
So we must seek gentler means of attaining the velocities required for space travel. 
Perhaps a digression to explain the necessity of these velocities is in order at this time. There are two main reasons for requiring high velocities to reach the planets. The first is the great distances to be traversed. You don't want to spend half a lifetime crawling the more than 30 million miles to Mars at a hundred or even a thousand miles per hour. You need something which will cut the time down to

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Only a trip to Venus will answer the questions, and it is to Venus rather than to Mars that I think the first interplanetary ships could set their course. Since Venus is nearly the size of earth, and since it has more of an atmosphere than has Mars, Venus presents more promise of interesting developments than does Mars. However, to be realistic about it, we must remember that spectroscopic observations to date give no reason to be optimistic concerning Venus. Up to now the atmosphere of Venus has been considered to be strictly poison. However, that's not the final verdict yet. In fiction the standard purposes of space travel have been exploration, colonization, and exploitation, copying in essence the colonial period which followed Columbus' trip. I fear that this highly romantic outlook is not due to be realized for quite a long timel The sheer dangers and difficulties of space travel will make it something for but a chosen few. It's not a matter of throwing together a sailing ship out of some old lumber and getting together a crew of men, as it used to be. With space travel it's a business of riding through a deadly vacuum in a little bubble of metal driven by highly unstable and explosive forces, controlled by delicate pieces of machinery, the failure of which means instant extinction. And life-rafts don't work in space. As for mining--a favorite occupation of fictional rocketeers--I can't think of anything mineable which is valuable enough to pay for the frightful cost of a space ship. And it seems highly unlikely that our Captain Futures will discover asteroids made of solid uranium. However, to prove that I am not a complete pessimist, I will admit that these remarks are based on present inflated prices, and that it is likely that the cost of a space ship will go down in five hundred years or so, making the exploits of our future rocketeers a bit more practical. In fact, upon considering the development of the modern battleship since the time of the civil war, I think I'll reduce that five hundred years to one hundred. In order to appreciate the magnitude of the problems facing space travel, we must first consider the means of propulsion at hand. This is the core, the nucleus of the interplanetary travel problem. For the regions between the planets possess one important property which makes travel in those regions different from anything as yet experienced. There is no air there. This means that the method of propulsion used must require no ground to push against, no air or other fluid to buoy up the vessel, no winds to blow against sails, no medium for a propellor to operate on. Of course we need not even consider the baloons and air-born sailboats used by early fiction writers for their trips to the moon. We need not spend more than a moment considering Jules Verne's projectile, for an easy calculation discovers that to attain the escape velocity of seven miles per second with a cannon one thousand feet long requires an acceleration of approximately 21,999 times the force of gravity. A proximity fuze could stand it, but it is unlikely that a human being could be recognized after going through the process. So we must seek gentler means of attaining the velocities required for space travel. Perhaps a digression to explain the necessity of these velocities is in order at this time. There are two main reasons for requiring high velocities to reach the planets. The first is the great distances to be traversed. You don't want to spend half a lifetime crawling the more than 30 million miles to Mars at a hundred or even a thousand miles per hour. You need something which will cut the time down to (33)