Only a Paper Moon: The British Interplanetary Society's Lunar Spaceship

Aeryn Avilla
May 26, 2021
10 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

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“Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It’s completely impossible. (2) It’s possible, but it’s not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.” — Sir Arthur C. Clarke

In the early 1900s, interest in rocketry and space exploration was growing around the world. In 1903, Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published his article “Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Devices”, notable for being the first time it was suggested a rocket could be used for spaceflight outside the realm of science fiction. By the early 1930s, rocket societies had cropped up in the United States, Germany, and Soviet Union. One rocket society in Pasadena, California became the famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory, responsible for producing and operating some of the most influential American spacecraft in history. Across the pond in London, England, a group of young lads had their sights set on the moon.

Artist's depiction of the British Interplanetary Society's lunar lander concept predating World War II — Depiction of the moonship on the surface by space artist David A. Hardy *(British Interplanetary Society)*

The British Interplanetary Society formed in 1933 with the goal of “the stimulation of public interest in the possibility of interplanetary travel…and the conducting of practical research in connection with such problems” (BIS). It is the world’s oldest existing space advocacy organization—three that proceeded it, one in the United States, one in Germany, and one in the Soviet Union, no longer exist in their original capacities [1].

Society members wanted a project that would popularize the concept of interplanetary travel while simultaneously proving the young organization could be trusted with the legitimate scientific research. They chose space travel over more concrete and practical ideas, such as a rocket-powered car, for two reasons. First, they were forbidden by Britain’s Explosives Act of 1875 from shooting off real rockets for no reason. Second, and something much more relatable a hundred years later, they were broke. Members were teenagers and young adults who did not have money expensive equipment. As Society member and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke put it, “We were in the position of someone who couldn’t afford a car, but had enough for the speedometer and the rearview mirror.” Therefore, the group was limited to a paper-only design study that did not cost money or need equipment, but could be as complex as they pleased.

Members of the British Interplanetary Society in 1938, including future science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke — The BIS meets with Midshipman Robert Traux [2 ] from the American Rocket Society in July 1938 at the home of R.A. Smith (from left: H.E. Ross, J.H. Edwards, H.E. Turner, R. Traux, R.A. Smith, M.K. Hanson, A.C. Clarke) *(British Interplanetary Society)*

In 1937, the BIS Technical Committee set out to develop the world’s first detailed study of a manned lunar mission. It is important to note they were not the first to consider the technical requirements of flying to the moon—rocket pioneers Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Hermann Oberth, and Robert Goddard beat them to it. The latter first suggested a rocket could be sent to the moon in 1919, 7 years before he would launch the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket. The society’s proposal was more extensive and outlined the various challenges relating to both the vehicle and its crew.

The Technical Committee consisted of about a dozen members and was headed by engineer J. Happian Edwards. Clarke was the astronomer of the group and according to Smithsonian Magazine, “filled sketchbooks with drawings of lunar craters seen through a homemade telescope" (Reinhardt, 1997). The group included draftsman H. Bramhill, aircraft engineer Val Cleaver, mathematician M.K. Hanson, Viennese chemist Arthur Janser, biologist S. Klemantiski, electrical engineer Harold E. Ross, and artist and engineer Ralph A. Smith. Smith was Edwards’ childhood friend and made his living designing the interiors of London cinemas and hotels. He illustrated many of the society’s concepts. His son Ashtyn, who later worked on the Apollo program, called the group “the most unusual bunch of people you could expect to run across.” Committee meetings were held in Smith’s living room but did sometimes move meetings to the pub.

Despite being science fiction fans themselves, the committee did its best to avoid sci-fi concepts and clichés the English population was already exposed to thanks to H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs; they used only principles that been developed the by rocketeers, engineers, and scientists before them. The Technical Committee published a paper detailing the results of their lunar spaceship study in the summer of 1939.

Cutaway of the BIS moonship with astronaut outside — Postwar liquid-fueled concept with astronaut outside for scale *(BIS)*

The study determined a single-stage launch vehicle was not feasible, as “99% or more of its initial liftoff mass would have to consist of propellant” (BIS). Instead, the rocket consisted of six stages, which they called “steps”, the final of which was a gumdrop-shaped lunar lander. Each step would be smaller in size to the previous and discarded once it burned through its fuel, what we today call “staging”. At the time, only solid-fuel rockets were available in Britain, so the paper proposed hundreds of solid rocket motors bundled together like sticks of dynamite in the shape of a hexagon. The lower five steps made up the launch vehicle and had 168 motors apiece. The final step had 45 medium motors and 1,200 smaller tubes for lunar descent, ascent, and return to Earth. This design allowed the motors to be mass produced, reducing the overall cost of the rocket. According to the British Interplanetary Society, the committee “considered that the development of rocket motors for their proposed lunar mission would have to proceed in stages, beginning with literature and experimental studies of possible propellants, followed by the design of chambers and nozzles on the best theoretical basis.” They also constructed a basic test stand for static proving firings.

The hexagonal booster had a height of 32 meters, (105 feet), a diameter of 6 meters (19.7 feet), and liftoff mass of 112 metric tons. For reference, the American Gemini-Titan II was 33 meters in length, 3 meters in diameter, and had a liftoff mass of 150 tons. Using solid fuel proved to be the most impractical feature of the moon rocket concept. Most rocketeers even back then preferred liquid fuels, like the 18-year-old Eric Burgess who led an affiliated astronautical society in Manchester and was designing his own moon rocket using petrol and liquid oxygen [3]. According to Clarke, no one on the technical committee imagined the development of pumps that could handle the amount of fuel that burned every second during launch. However, less than 1,000 miles away a well-funded German team led by Wernher von Braun was close to solving that very problem.

The gumdrop-shaped lunar lander did not physically resemble lunar excursion module proposals from the 1960s, though Gumdrop was the name of Apollo 9’s command module, and would deliver a crew of three to the lunar surface for a 14-day stay. Its pressurized cabin was similar to that of the Apollo command module and its landing gear was similar to that of the Apollo lunar module. Since the physiological effects of weightlessness were still unknown at the time, the spacecraft would have rotated around its major axis to create artificial gravity.

Cutaway illustration of the British Interplanetary Society's moonship — Cutaway of the BIS moonship *(Smithsonian)*

Instead of constructing a launch pad, the moon-ship would have launched from a floating platform in a body of water near the equator. The rocket would be inside a partially submerged caisson, a watertight chamber usually used in construction work under water. Only the sixth stage would make the journey to the moon and back, landing, lifting off, and reentering in one piece. This method of landing on the moon is called lunar direct ascent and does not involve assembling the vehicle in low Earth orbit or carrying a separate landing vehicle. This was the original favored landing method for the Apollo program but was not possible with the technology of the time. To return to Earth, the lander would use aerobraking and a parachute to descend through the atmosphere and to the surface.

The first British Interplanetary Society spacesuit would not be designed until 1949, but the original suit would have been made of rubber or leather and include flat shoes and dark goggles. Equipment for the lunar voyage included balsa wood pencils, charts and books printed on rice-paper, geological hammers, spades, a telescope, a microscope, sunburn lotion for working in the sun, and a canvas tent to place over the lander to reduce internal temperature. All the oxygen and water the crew and spacecraft needed would come from a single tank of liquid hydrogen peroxide. The food chosen had a high energy content: bread and butter, cheese, porridge, honey, ham, salmon, and raisins. The drink of choice was cocoa because it was water-based and could be mixed with coffee to keep the crew awake during their long hours. While on the surface, the crew would communicate with the Earth using flashes of light.

Artist's rendering of the British Interplanetary Society's lunar lander — BIS Moonship *(BIS)*

Though the society’s lunar mission was never meant to take flight, the biggest problems it faced, as space projects of future decades would face, were lack of time, money, and manpower. The group’s initial prediction of launch in fifteen years was not feasible in an era where the notion of space travel itself was considered crazy. According to society member Leonard Carter, discussion of lunar travel prior to World War II “was regarded as a form of lunacy, and not a mild one at that.” In early 1939, the lunar spaceship design received a bit of publicity from magazines and publications, including Time, that circulated as far away as British-occupied India. Unfortunately, in September 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland and Britain declared war on Germany. British men were encouraged to take up arms and the society was temporarily dissolved. When the society reformed after the war, its members were more mature and numerous. Their concepts for rockets and space travel were no longer whimsical, almost juvenile ideas after witnessing the devastating power of the German V-2 rocket.

Immediately after the end of the war in Europe in spring 1945, the United States and the United Kingdom, but mostly the UK, conducted Operation Backfire, during which British personnel captured V-2 rocket technology from abandoned German factories. The handling and launch procedures were carried out by German personnel and three vehicles were launched near Cuxhaven in the British Occupation zone. The British Interplanetary Society saw [these launches] and initiated the Megaroc program, aimed to develop a sub-orbital man-rated derivative of the V-2 using technology and information collected during Operation Backfire. Megaroc had a lot in common with the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle and its flight profile, which makes sense since the MRLV was derived from the U.S. Army Redstone missile, which was a direct descent of the the V-2 rocket. The Megaroc proposal was rejected in favor of developing technology with more direct and tangible military usage, namely nuclear capability.

Longtime Technical Committee member R. A. Smith’s August 1947 article “Landing on an Airless World” accurately outlined the procedures of landing on the moon the Apollo lunar module would later use. He wrote and illustrated the book The Exploration of the Moon that same year. In 1951, the society held a conference to plan the world’s first artificial satellite—four years before the United States’ announcement of their intention to launch “small Earth circling satellites” between 1957 and 1958. A few of the original members continued refining the old lunar ship and incorporated newly developed German technology into it. The end product was much closer to what NASA would launch in the late 1960s. Val Cleaver went on to become chief engineer of Rolls-Royce’s rocket division.

Arthur C. Clarke predicted the invention of the geostationary communications satellite in 1945 and rose to international fame as one of the "Big Three" of science fiction (with American authors Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein). In the mid-1960s, he co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the most influential films ever made. In July 1969, 30 years to the month of the British Interplanetary Society publishing their study of a manned lunar mission, Clarke sat next to Walter Cronkite of CBS and retired astronaut Wally Schirra as a commentator on the first manned moon landing.

Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke with Neil Armstrong — Clarke with Neil Armstrong, June 1970 *(image source:* *oocities.org*)

Britain’s first official space program began in 1952 with its first satellite program, Ariel, beginning in 1959. Six Ariel satellites were built by the U.S. and UK and launched on American rockets. The first and only native British satellite, Prospero, was put into orbit by the first and only native British rocket, Black Arrow, in 1971.

Called “one of the classical pioneering studies in the history of astronautics” by the contemporary British Interplanetary Society, the 1930s lunar spaceship proposal was the world’s first detailed plan for landing men on the moon. Many of the concepts introduced in their report were later used by the Apollo program, such as launching a multistage rocket and using a parachute to slow the spacecraft down during descent to Earth. The proposal was about two decades ahead of its time, though, and the common man did not take rocketry seriously until after World War II. While the society’s moon-ship is now remembered as a very minute piece of space history from an era when space travel was purely science fiction, it is nonetheless one of the small steps taken in preparation for man's exploration of the final frontier.

"We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return…The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation…the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began.” — Clarke, The Exploration of Space, 1951

Author's note: I could not help but feel a special connection to this post. At 20, Clarke was developing plans to send men to the moon. More than 80 years later, here I am at the same age writing about his team's concept to share with the world. We both even had the same goal— get people interested in space exploration. As always, thank you for reading and remember to like, share, and check out my other posts!

[1] The American Interplanetary Society formed in 1930 and was dissolved in 1963 when it merged with the Institute of the Aerospace Studies to form the AIAA. The German Verein für Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel) existed from 1927 to 1934. The Soviet Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel was founded in 1924 and lasted only about a year.

[2] Robert Traux is the creator of the Sea Dragon, a massive sea-launched two-stage rocket concept from the 1960s.

[3] Burgess went on to write for NASA and gave Carl Sagan the idea for the Pioneer plaques. The plaques were placed on Pioneers 10 and 11 and featured pictorial messages in the case intelligent extraterrestrial life came across them.

Only a Paper Moon: The British Interplanetary Society's Lunar Spaceship

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