History Main / InterplanetaryVoyage

''To put it another way'', an Interplanetary Voyage is a specific type of science-fiction story that takes the phrase "getting there is half the fun" very literally. In most cases these stories focus just as much, if not more, on the actual process of traveling in space as they do on the destination itself. Nowadays, this is largely a DeadHorseTrope outside of parodies or GenreThrowback works--the fact that space travel actually exists now allows writers to spend less time establishing it and more time building alien worlds. As a result, Interplanetary Voyage stories are strongly associated with science fiction novels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and with pulp magazines published during that era. Nevertheless, some modern writers still play this trope straight, but more realistically - works on the harder side of the SlidingScale/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness might depict a crewed mission to a planet like Mars or Jupiter as a long and arduous journey.

''To put it another way'', an Interplanetary Voyage is a specific type of science-fiction story that takes the phrase "getting there is half the fun" very literally. In most cases these stories focus just as much, if not more, on the actual process of traveling in space as they do on the destination itself. Nowadays, this is largely a DeadHorseTrope outside of parodies or GenreThrowback works--the fact that space travel actually exists now allows writers to spend less time establishing it and more time building alien worlds. As a result, Interplanetary Voyage stories are strongly associated with science fiction novels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and with pulp magazines published during that era. Nevertheless, some modern writers still play this trope straight, but more realistically - works on the harder side of the MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness might depict a crewed mission to a planet like Mars or Jupiter as a long and arduous journey.

''To put it another way'', an Interplanetary Voyage is a specific type of science-fiction story that takes the phrase "getting there is half the fun" very literally. In most cases these stories focus just as much, if not more, on the actual process of traveling in space as they do on the destination itself. Nowadays, this is largely a DeadHorseTrope outside of parodies or GenreThrowback works--the fact that space travel actually exists now allows writers to spend less time establishing it and more time building alien worlds. As a result, Interplanetary Voyage stories are strongly associated with science fiction novels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and with pulp magazines published during that era. Nevertheless, some modern writers still play this trope straight.

At the beginning of the Science Fiction genre, space travel was a new and novel trope. It wasn't about the destination - the [[BoldExplorer journey alone was interesting enough]]. There was no CasualInterplanetaryTravel (let alone ''[[CasualInterstellarTravel interstellar]]''). We didn't have your fancy [[FasterThanLightTravel Hyper Drive]] or [[PortalNetwork wormhole networks]] or your [[SubspaceAnsible sub-ether anagrammed-tribadist Teslafied radio transmittion contraptions]], and we had to walk sixteen miles back and forth through the snow to the launch site. We were lucky if we had a pith helmet! Our science was silly, but it tried to be [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness hard]] ...[[ScienceMarchesOn for its time]] (except for [[Creator/HGWells Cavorite]]. That's just [[HandWave magic]]).

Contrast CasualInterplanetaryTravel, where travel between planets is so trivial that it is barely touched upon in the story.

* ''The Man in the Moone'' by Francis Godwin, (1638) in which a Spaniard take a swan-powered boat trip to the Moon.

* ''Literature/FromTheEarthToTheMoon'' by Creator/JulesVerne, and its film and opera adaptations.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's "Literature/TheCallistanMenace": Half the story takes place on the way to {{UsefulNotes/Jupiter}}, letting us get to know the characters and [[{{Foreshadowing}} setting up the tools needed to resolve the main conflict]].

* Most of the run of ''Moony the Moon Man'' (the comic is no longer available online, sadly) was taken up with the titular little green Moon man's attempts to build a spaceship to get to Earth, because he was lonely.

* Most of the run of ''Moony the Moon Man'' (the comic is no longer available online, sadly) was taken up with the titular little green Moon man's attempts to build a spaceship to get to Earth.

* ''Discworld/TheLastHero'' is a MagiTek version, with a group of explorers reaching the Literature/{{Discworld}}'s moon by means of a giant wooden bird powered by [[OurDragonsAreDifferent swamp dragons]].

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* The ''TabletopGame/{{Space 1889}}'' RPG took this trope and ran with it, featuring Victorian-era space colonies -- colonies, as in "Age of European Colonialism" -- on the Moon, Mars, and Venus.

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* The Apollo program, which probably turned this into a DeadHorseTrope.

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* The UrExample is Lucian's ''Literature/TrueHistory'', the first work of western fiction about a voyage to the moon.

* ''The Road to Mars'' is a 2014 collaborative Russian novel, written by 15 authors. The novel deals with the [[MultinationalTeam multinational crew]] of the spacecraft ''Ares'', sent to explore the red planet as part of a joint American/Russian/European mission with two crewmembers from each of these blocs. They are actually in a race to overtake the ''Millennium Boat'', a Chinese craft sent to the same destination a little earlier with only two crewmembers. Privately, though, some of the crewmembers on both vessels would much rather work together to ensure that everyone got home safely rather than win at any cost. After all, it's just them out there, with no other living soul for millions of miles. There is a supernatural component to the novel, though, which starts to affect the crew of the ''Ares''.

* ''[[Pinball/{{Pinbot}} Pin*Bot]]'' requires the player to advance across the Solar System, from Pluto to the Sun.

* ''Film/TheMartian'', based on the aforementioned, eponymous novel.

* The Russian film ''Planeta Bur'' (Storm Planet, 1962) is about an expedition to Venus that discovers dinosaurs. Bit of a running theme, actually.

[[WhenIWasYourAge You youngsters]] with your single-stage rockets and intertialess drives and horseless space shuttles have it easy. Back then, you had to build a balloon filled with evaporating morning dew, or strap on a giant rocket, or [[Film/ATripToTheMoon get shot out of a bloody cannon at the Man in the Moon and put his eye out]].

* A countless number of B-movies, such as ''Rocketship to Venus'', ''Film/RocketshipXM'', ''DestinationMoon'' and ''Film/ProjectMoonbase''.

* Creator/LarryNiven's short story "[[Literature/KnownSpace Becalmed in Hell]]" (1965), involving a trip to a hellishly hot Venus. "The Coldest Place" and "The Hole Man" were set on Mercury and Mars, respectively.

* The UrExample is Lucian's ''Literature/TrueStory'', the first work of western fiction about a voyage to the moon.

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* The ComicBook/{{Planetary}} story "The Gun Club" features a horror-tinged {{Deconstruction}} of Verne's classic tale, ''Literature/FromTheEarthToTheMoon.''
* The second story arc of ''ComicBook/DeCapeEtDeCrocs'' takes place on the moon and pays tribute to ''Cyrano de Bergerac''.
* ''ComicStrip/DanDare'' in ''The Eagle'' comic is perhaps ''the'' example of trying hard to be scientifically accurate space travel (for the 1950s, at least), with (almost all) the stories being limited to travel around a then-realistic version of the solar system using then-realistic spacecraft etc.
* ''{{Franchise/Tintin}}'' featured one such voyage in the album ''Destination Moon''. The story is continued in the next one, ''Explorers on the Moon''.
* ''ComicBook/TheSmurfs'' comic book story (and its AnimatedAdaptation) "The Astro Smurf" have its title character attempt this with the creation of his smurfship, although his attempt ended up failing. Papa Smurf and all his little Smurfs secretly lead Astro into a FauxtasticVoyage by transporting his ship inside an inactive volcano and turning themselves into the alien cavepeople called Swoofs.

[[folder: Film ]]

* ''Film/ATripToTheMoon'', the 1902 film by Georges Méliès.
* A countless number of B-movies, such as ''Rocketship to Venus'', ''Film/RocketshipXM'', ''DestinationMoon'' and ''Film/ProjectMoonbase''.
* ''Film/MissionToMars'' and ''Film/RedPlanet'', newer version of this trope.
* Perhaps the best contemporary example would be ''Film/EuropaReport'': hard sci-fi horror, presented in ApocalypticLog form, yet still somehow manages to convey the same sense of wonder that is intrinsic of this trope.
* The Wallace and Gromit short ''WesternAnimation/AGrandDayOut'' involves a rocket trip to the moon, which is made of green cheese.
* Creator/FritzLang's 1929 film ''Film/WomanInTheMoon.''
* A.N. Tolstory's ''Aelita'', later adapted into the groundbreaking 1924 Soviet science fiction film of the same name, describes a voyage to Mars.
* The Russian film ''Planeta Bur'' (Storm Planet, 1962) is about an expedition to Venus that discovers dinosaurs. Bit of a running theme, actually.
* And of course, ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''.
* ''Film/TheMartian'', based on the aforementioned, eponymous novel.

[[folder: Pinball ]]

* ''[[Pinball/{{Pinbot}} Pin*Bot]]'' requires the player to advance across the Solar System, from Pluto to the Sun.

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Orbiter}}''
* ''VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram'' is essentially an Interplanetary Voyage Simulator. It uses a physics engine to simulate realistic-but-simplified orbital mechanics and gives you essentially the same limitations that NASA has now (or might have TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture), but once you're aloft, you can explore the solar system to your heart's desire (and the limits of your fuel tanks) and even run across a few [[EasterEgg anomalies]] along the lines of ''2001'' (though they don't actually do anything).

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

* The comic ''{{Webcomic/Narbonic}}'' ran a special Sunday feature spread out over a couple years, with a Victorian-era MadScientist Helen Narbon and her minion Dave Davenport taking a rocket to other planets and encountering spacefaring Venusians and Martians. And even the Victorian-era Helen can't escape [[spoiler: the influence of her mother.]]

[[folder: Other ]]

* Although actual space travel wasn't involved, the infamous "Moon Hoax" article series in the New York ''Sun'' used a super-telescope and elements of this trope to boost circulation in the mid-1800s.
* The ''Kerbal Space Program'' fanfic ''Fanfic/TheNextFrontier'' may involve interstellar travel, but it's definitely not the [[CasualInterstellarTravel casual or fast]] sort. Travel times just between planets vary from a couple of weeks to several months, and the current state of the art in FasterThanLightTravel gets about one light-year a ''month''.

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]

* The ''TabletopGame/{{Space 1889}}'' RPG took this trope and ran with it, featuring Victorian-era space colonies -- colonies, as in "Age of European Colonialism" -- on the Moon, Mars, and Venus.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* The Apollo program, which probably turned this into a DeadHorseTrope.

[[/folder]]

* The comic ''{{Narbonic}}'' ran a special Sunday feature spread out over a couple years, with a Victorian-era MadScientist Helen Narbon and her minion Dave Davenport taking a rocket to other planets and encountering spacefaring Venusians and Martians. And even the Victorian-era Helen can't escape [[spoiler: the influence of her mother.]]

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

* ''The Adventures Of Baron Münchhausen'' (1786) involve two trips to the Moon.

* ''In Les Exilés de la Terre'' (Exiled from Earth) by Paschal Grousset involves a trip inside of an iron mountain in Sudan that has been converted into a magnetically driven vehicle (1887).

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* ''Film/ATripToTheMoon'', the 1902 film by Georges Méliès.

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