A.W. Bickerton (1842–1929) British scientist
From Basics of space flight, Ludwik Marian Celnikier, 1993, ISBN 2863321323, quoting "Discouraging Words", Spaceflight, 34, 225 (1992).
“How will you construct the gun that will stand this strain? … you will enter the shell and detonate the explosive and start off at 7 miles a second. That is, you get a blow 50 times as hard as if struck by a Big Bertha shell. Clearly, you are flattened like a pancake. The bump is equal to a fall from a height of many thousands of miles …. This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd length to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists working in thought-tight compartments …. all these errors could be easily avoided by correlative meetings of groups of different scientists investigating all kinds of cosmic problems. This is the work the Correlative Science Society, established by the Royal Botanic Society, has been attempting to do with most encouraging results.”
From Scholar-Errant: A biography of Professor A.W. Bickerton, by R.M. Burdon, Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1956, quoting an article by Bickerton in the Daily Mail, who was then apparently commenting on a plan by some Russian scientists to be launched to the moon from a large gun, a la Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon:
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