The first workable proposal for a space program is apparently Wernher von Braun’s Project Mars. Project Mars is a work of fiction, but it lays out a space program that could probably take humans to Mars with the technology of 1955.
Project Mars (the book) didn’t see print until 2006, although it’s technical appendix was published as The Mars Project. in 1953.
In my post about Lester Del Rey’s 1956 sci-fi thriller Mission to the Moon, I criticized Del Rey’s cis-lunar flight orbital mechanics. Del Rey had his moon missions leaving from a polar orbit around the earth. This struck me as very odd - all real lunar and interplanetary missions have left from a more-or-less equatorial orbit, or maybe even fly directly into an interplanetary orbit. I thought Del Rey had completely misunderstood orbital mechanics, or had mis-read von Braun.
I was wrong.
I’ve been reading science fiction for a long time, since maybe second grade, circa 1968. I believe that the first scifi book I read was Lester Del Rey’s Mission to the Moon.
