NASA CHANNELS THE FUTURE through Verne 

Alexander MacDonald, chief economist for NASA, addressed a group of writers at the first-ever Space Economy Camp for Writers, sponsored by the Interplanetary Initiative at Arizona State University.The purpose of the three-day camp was to support the 20 established writers as they imagine space worlds with new economic models.

“This is why you all are so important not just to space flight but to imagining in general,” MacDonald told the group.

“We don’t go to space because we have the machines. We go to space because we have a culture of people who are inspired to build the machines.

“The narratives create the future.” MacDonald said that one of the first known stories of space flight was in the 16th century, when it was speculated that people could harness flying geese to ride to the moon.Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a bell-maker who uses his knowledge on how to condense air to keep himself alive on the way to the moon.

“That was the first spacecraft components list in history, and his character gets to the moon,” MacDonald said.Poe inspired Jules Verne, who wrote “From the Earth to the Moon,” a novel that was set in Baltimore as an ode to Poe. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian and rocket scientist, was inspired by Verne and theorized the science of spaceflight in the 19th century.

MacDonald said that Robert Goddard, an American engineer and physicist who invented the first liquid-propelled rocket, was inspired by “The War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells.