When  man made satellites were launched into space, we might say, mankind dapped his toe into the vast oceans of space. But the dream of space travel belongs to the ages, for man always has wanted to visit the heavens. Space travel is part of our wonderful destiny and no one can stop the daring adventure from coming true.

We find the dream of space travel in the earliest legends. The Norse and Greek gods lived in the heavens and visited back and forth. The American Indians thought that the Milky Way was a stairway between the earth and sky. And 5,000 years ago, the Hindus imagined a space craft called a garuda for their gods. But space travel for men seemed too good to be true.

In the deserts of ancient Mesopotamia, however, there were serious star gazers and to them the heavens seemed more real. The first stories of man as a space traveler came from this region. They were written by Lucian of Samasota before 100 A.D. In one story, a ship is blown to the moon by a stormy wind, in another a man flies to the moon on giant wings.

For the next 1,500 years most people found the notion of space travel. too fantastic. 1ankind and his dreams were stuck on the ground because he had a wrong idea in his head. Until some 400 years ago, most people thought that this little world was the center of the universe and that all the heavens revolved around it. Then the great Galileo proved that our world is but a small item in the heavens.

This was a shattering blow to man’s pride, but he soon recovered. He saw the advantages in the new idea and dreamed of visiting other worlds.

Stories of space travel began again. The first were very fanciful, but as time went on they became more realistic. In one story of a trip to the moon, the hero is pulled through space by giant birds.

In 1648, Cyrano de Bergerac wrote of space craft powered by rockets. Edgar Allen Poe wrote of a trip to the moon in a balloon and Jules Verne wrote of a space craft shot from a giant cannon. By 1880, man's space traveling imagination had stretched beyond the moon. An Englishman wrote of a trip to Mars in a space ship powered by a force called negative gravity. All these tales, along with the ancient legends, are part of man's dream of space travel. When our century began, inventors and scientists were ready to start planning for the great adventure in earnest.

German and Russian inventors are given credit for the first serious plans for space rockets. In 1919, Dr. Robert Goddard of Massachusetts designed a space rocket and calculated a journey to the moon. In 1927, a magazine called Rocket was started in Germany by The Society for Space Travel. Space minded people from all over the world began to exchange ideas and make serious plans for the great adventure.