From Science Fiction to the Stars: The Evolution of the American Rocket Society

摘要

In the early spring of 1930 ten young men and one woman met at a back table of Nino and Nella's, a walk-down Italian restaurant/speak easy in the West Chelsea section of New York. All of them had one thing in common, they were science fiction writers, contributors to Hugo Gernsback's pulp magazines, Amazing Stories and Science Wonder Stories. Not content with describing fictional interplanetary voyages, they were convinced, as one of them noted, that, "despite all the evidence and scientific opinion to the contrary, a trip to the Moon seemed to be just around the corner." Before their dinner meeting broke up in the early hours of the morning, they decided to create a new organization, the American Interplanetary Society (AIS), through which they would share their vision of humanities future in space.