Re: Old time stories about the millionaire rocket developer?

[Robert Clark]

On Dec 1, 1:18 am, Robert Clark <rgregorycl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>  I grew up in the 70's and started reading SF then. I liked reading
> then not only the current fiction but the SF of the early years like
> in the 30's and 40's. It seemed quaint though the stories from that
> period of the millionaires who hired the scientists to build or built
> themselves the rockets that allowed them to become the first men in
> space. In the 70's it seemed only the largest governments could afford
> to do this.
>  Well maybe such iconoclastic millionaires won't be the first in space
> but it is becoming increasingly likely they will be able to produce
> their own space vehicles capable of taking passengers to orbit. I'm
> thinking of Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk of SpaceX,
> Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin, John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace, and
> some others.
>  What are some of the best stories of the early years of SF with this
> theme?
>
>  BTW, I'm of the opinion that the rapidly decreasing cost of
> lightweight composite materials will soon make possible single stage
> rockets of the kind Robert Heinlein and the other early guys used to
> write about:
>
> Newsgroups: sci.space.policy, sci.astro, sci.physics
> From: Robert Clark <rgregorycl...@yahoo.com>
> Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:18:40 -0800 (PST)
> Subject: Re: A kerosene-fueled X-33 as a single stage to orbit
> vehicle.http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.policy/msg/a8c511e5d30761fd?...
>
> Newsgroups: sci.space.policy, sci.astro, sci.physics
> From: Robert Clark <rgregorycl...@yahoo.com>
> Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:15:23 -0800 (PST)
> Subject: Re: A kerosene-fueled X-33 as a single stage to orbit
> vehicle.http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.policy/msg/834d710b2786c92b?...
>
> Newsgroups: sci.space.policy, sci.astro, sci.physics
> From: Robert Clark <rgregorycl...@yahoo.com>
> Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 08:24:23 -0800 (PST)
> Subject: Re: A kerosene-fueled X-33 as a single stage to orbit
> vehicle.http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.policy/msg/c52a76fed257d380?...
>

I looked up one of my books containing S/F stories of the early
period. This one was "The Early Del Rey." It contained the short story
"The Stars Look Down". This was written in the 40's. It concerned two
millionaire business men competing against each other to become the
first men in space. One of them uses atomic power for his ship, the
other explosives.
Being written during war time, del Rey chose to have the two mens
competing teams actually battle each other with firearms in the race
to have their rocket reach space first. This was one of del Rey's
early writing efforts. You can tell he was still improving his writing
skills.
Still it is interesting in that it presented a view common in science
fiction during that period that individual, wealthy visionaries would
be responsible for building the first rockets to space, not giant
government agencies.
As I said, we are close to achieving that.

Bob Clark

[Robert Clark]

Here's another example. This was by Isaac Asimov, and I read it in
his book of collected stories _The Early Asimov_. This story was
entitled "Trends", first published in July, 1939 in _Astounding
Science Fiction_. It's set in 1973.
Asimov is my favorite S/F author. He's been criticized sometimes for
his lack of artistry in his writing style, but you don't read Asimov
for great art, you read him for his wealth of ideas. There a few good
ideas in this story. Asimov says in the prefatory notes to the story
that he had a part-time job in college typing the manuscript for a
sociologist studying resistance to technological change in history.
This gave Asimov the idea that there might not be a great welcoming of
someone attempting for the first time to reach the heavens but a
resistance to it. To support this plot point he had the U.S.
undergoing an extreme religious fundamentalism during the period that
restricted rather than promoted science.
Such resistance in reality was certainly not widespread, as it
actually turned out. But Asimov did make an interesting prediction
that could be regarded as true. He wrote this in 1939. He expected the
U.S. as many people did to be drawn into the war in Europe. But an
interesting prediction he made then would be that in the post-war
period after World War II there would be a great deal of moral and
social conservatism. This did indeed happen in the 1950's.
The title of story come from the idea that there are pendulum swings
in the attitudes towards technological and social advances. The story
was set in a time of severe social and technological restriction. But
as Asimov noted the pendulum does swing ...

Bob Clark