Cleator, P(hilip) E(llaby) (1908–1994)

Cofounder, with Les Johnson, and first president of the British Interplanetary Society (1933) and author of Rockets Through Space: The Dawn of Interplanetary Travel¹ (1936) and Into Space (1954). Cleator proved to be more prescient than one of his reviewers, the astronomer Richard van der Riet Wooley, who in the Mar. 14, 1936, issue of Nature wrote:

The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space] ... presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished.

Reference

Cleator, P. E. Rockets Through Space: The Dawn of Interplanetary Travel. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1936.

Related category

• ROCKET ENGINEERS AND SPACE SCIENTISTS

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