Most papers about interstellar flight appear in serious venues like Acta Astronautica or the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. The latter, in fact, has emerged as the leading arena for such discussions, and the growth of the arXiv site has brought many new ideas to light in the digital realm. It may be surprising, then, to find that the popular Astounding Science Fiction was once a key player in interstellar theory with the publication of an article that brought solar sails to the attention of the public — and to many scientists — for the first time. But the magazine, in the hands of the capable John Campbell, was often home to science essays, and none more prescient than this one.

“Clipper Ships of Space” appeared under the byline Russell Saunders in Astounding‘s issue of May, 1951. ‘Saunders’ was in reality an engineer named Carl Wiley, who we may speculate wrote under a pseudonym to avoid any damage to his reputation — many scientists and engineers read science fiction, but some have a more tolerant view of it than others. And to be sure, the idea of a solar sail wasn’t Wiley’s own invention; indeed, the British physicist and socialist J.D. Bernal had written about ‘space sailing’ in 1929 (in his The World, the Flesh & the Devil: An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul).

And so, even earlier, had Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, while his colleague Friderikh Arturovich Tsander had investigated huge, thin reflecting surfaces for such purposes in the 1920s, important work but limited in circulation. Some trace the notion of solar sailing as far back as Kepler. But it was left to Wiley to get the idea out to a much broader audience, and he did so convincingly in a short, seven page article that began like this:

It is becoming more and more taken for granted that the only possible method of propulsion in a vacuum is the rocket. It is true that science fiction is full of various types of space-warp drives. However, even the fertile imaginations of writers in this field have not challenged the rocket as the only practical, or even possible interplanetary drive in the forseeable future.

I intend to propose another method of propulsion in a vacuum which is based on present day physics. I will show that in many ways this drive is more practical than the rocket. In order to prove my point I will have to use a certain amount of mathematics. This will permit those who wish to, a chance to check my assertions. The rest may follow my verbal argument which I hope will be fairly coherent without the mathematics.

And with those straightforward lines, solar sailing was launched into the public consciousness, although it would be seven years before Richard Garwin delivered the first look at solar sails in a technical journal. Garwin’s paper was “Solar Sailing: A Practical Method of Propulsion within the Solar System,” Jet Propulsion 28 (March 1958): 188-90. It’s a short, solid look at the topic, but lacks the charm of the Wiley essay, and the fact that solar sailing would continue to take shape through classic science fiction stories like Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Wind from the Sun” and Poul Anderson’s “Sunjammer” reminds us that the interplay between science and fiction can be productive indeed.