Early Space Exploration In The Future Histories

There is interplanetary travel in the Wellsian canon but not in Wells' future history, The Shape Of Things To Come, although a manned space projectile is launched in the film, Things To Come. Cavor and Bedford land on the Moon in what could be the past of several Wellsian futures.

There is interplanetary travel in Olaf Stapledon's future history, Last And First Men, and interstellar and intergalactic travel in his cosmic history, Star Maker.

There are voyages to Mars and Venus in CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy which is Lewis' reply to Wells' and Stapledon's future histories. Lewis' first man on the Moon story, "Forms of Things Unknown," (here) is derived from a single sentence in his Venus novel.

Although the opening installment of Robert Heinlein's Future History is set in 1952, the first Moon landing, in 1978, occurs off-stage during the fifth installment.

James Blish's Haertel Scholium begins with the teenage Adolph Haertel discovering anti-gravity and flying his tree hut to Mars in advance of a first Moon landing.

Larry Niven's Known Space future history begins, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, with the exploration of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Pluto.

Poul Anderson's Technic History begins with the exploration of the Saturnian moon, Iapetus, then of the extra-solar planets, Ythri and Gray/Avalon.

Neil Armstrong lands on the Moon in Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history and in Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars future history. In the latter, extra-solar exploration begins on the planet Demeter in the Alpha Centaurian system.