https://angadh.com/rockets-1
This is a cool article, but the scenario it raises is just as interesting.....
I think the author seriously underestimated how big was influence of Tsiolkovsky on the commoner's perception of spaceflight. Tsiolkovsky wasn't merely the inventor of rocket equation formula; he investigated multiple concepts about spaceflight, like different types of fuels, multiple rocket stages ("rocket trains"), different types of launch devices (including electromagnetic launchers), and even such ideas as fuel transfer. Granted, many of his ideas were rather amateurish - he
was an amateur, after all - but he was basically the first one, who demonstrated both with formulas and with understandable explanations that space rocket is possible, it's not something requiring "antigravity metals" or other futuristic stuff, it's something that could be build using only technology known at his time.
Before Tsiolkovsly, rockets in space fiction have basically same place as cannons (there were a lot of "space gun" stories in late XIX century, after Jules Verne sucsess!) No one viewed rockets as anything more "serious" than any other ways of fantastic spaceflight. In fact, some kind of "anti-gravity device" was mainstream in XIX century science fiction, because for most readers it was simpler to make analogue between electromagnetic and gravitational interaction and conclude "if there is gravity attraction, there must be gravity repulsion also!", while rocketry was viewed as of very limited use.
(in fact, even in early XX century, there were still a lot of peoples who thought that rocket could not move in vacuum, because rocket is "pushed by exhaust from surrounding gases". Even Goddard early works were criticized on that basic!)
It was only after Tsiolkovsly works, the sci-fi authors realized, that rockets are, in fact, much more realistic than other ways of fantastic space propulsion. And only then rockets became space fiction mainstream.
