April 1939

From The Space Library

Worlds Don't Care a science fiction story by American Interplanetary Society founder Nathaniel Schachner appears in Astounding Science Fiction magazine.

Arthur C. Clarke composes a four page leaflet describing the aims of the BIS. "We have had a considerable quantity of these leaflets printed," wrote Clarke in the society's Bulletin. In the leaflet Clarke employs many familiar methods of persuading the reader. He compares crossing space to Columbus finding the New World. He compares the cost to military spending. He talks of how aviators were ridiculed in the early days of aviation. He says that space can be conquered in a generation. He quotes the cost of the spacecraft and the launch vehicle at about £250,000 (£13.8M - 2014 adjusted). The payload at 1 or 2 tons.