By the 1930s, spaceflight’s visionaries, such as Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, and Oberth, had worked out how rockets could be made to ascend above the atmosphere, enter orbit, and even someday land on the Moon.

Younger enthusiasts became disciples of these visionaries, striving to spread the word to everyone that the Age of Space was about to arrive.

In Britain, this took the form of the British Interplanetary Society. Founded in 1933 in Liverpool, eventually its most active members were near London, so its center shifted there. They held meetings. They published a journal. They publicized their cause by writing letters to newspapers and by inviting prominent Britons to join. They corresponded with rocket advocates in other nations. They learned that under an Explosives Act, rocket experimentation was illegal, so their experiments focused on building the instruments a spacecraft would require.

[A light-hearted look at two fans in a Flat, and the rocketeers of London]