Reports in the press about the advances in space tourism being achieved by Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Sir Richard Branson would suggest we are at the dawn of a new age of commercial space travel. But we've been here before. These billionaire entrepreneurs are simply building on concepts initiated more than 70 years ago. Historians agree that technology developed during World War Two birthed the liquid-fuel rocket, the Athodyd (ramjet), the turbojet and its gas turbine derivative, the turboprop engine. German V-2 rockets and engine technology were seized by the Allies after the fall of Berlin and expanded upon by several nations. In 1945 and 1946, sensational articles in American magazines revealed details concerning the German V-2 rocket, the winged A4B, the piloted winged A-9/ A-10 derivative and a winged Sanger 'Anti-Podal' bomber. Limited details were made public, but it was enough to feed the readers' imaginations and make the Utopian worlds and interplanetary travel depicted in comic books and pulp fiction seem not only possible, but imminent. In 1945, Westinghouse executive, G Edward Pendray, one of several creators of the American Rocket Society, even outlined a vision for 83-minute civilian global rocket transport flights in the future.
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