FIRST ROCKETS

   When early writers wanted their characters to explore space, the idea of rockets just never came up. Even Jules Verne had his heroes blasted out of giant cannons, the sudden acceleration of which would have flattened them into jelly.It was the Russian scientist and science fiction writer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky who first realized how space flight would actuallywork. The year was 1883 and Tsiolkovsky was 26 years old when he first proposed the radical idea that jet propulsion could send a vehicle into space.Tsiolkovsky also came up with the concept of liquid propulsion. Until then, rockets had been filled with gunpowder. He even imagined themultiple stages of a rocket's liftoff.Way ahead of his time, Tsiolkovsky’s SF work is virtuallyunknown today. But his importance to the history ofspacetravel - and to science fiction - is clear.