From the Earth to Mars brings to life the visionaries who first realized the timeless dream of rocket travel in the early 1900s. Narrated by Jeffrey Manber, himself a commercial space veteran, Episodes 1 and 2 detail the intertwined similarities of the space communities that erupted first in Russia and then Germany, before the first rockets were even constructed. And before governments sought to control space exploration.

Manber guides the journey from the science fiction of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells to their devoted readers who changed the course of space exploration, including the Russian schoolteacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and the Romanian-German engineer Hermann Oberth. Revealed is the space- influenced web that included the German film artists Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou, the French space businessman Robert Esnault-Pelterie and the long-forgotten Latvian-Russian Friedrich Tsander, whose cry of “On to Mars, On to Mars!” inspired so many other early influential space dreamers.

The stories of German Space Pandemonium in Episode 1 and Russia’s Space Craze in Episode 2 focus on the magical ingredients that by the end of the 1920s took rocket travel in Europe from ridicule to acceptance. And why America lacked the founding space ecosystem, with only Robert Goddard pushing the US forward. Focused squarely on historical fact, with great comic strips and illustrations, the reader comes to understand the lessons to be learned from a century ago, as humanity today prepares to permanently settle on the lunar surface and begin the human exploration of Mars.