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The Cavor Sphere.
Off the coast of Zanzibar, a massive search was being undertaken as the US Navy and NASA worked together to try to locate and recover the sphere built by Joseph Cavor, a British scientist. The search had been organised following the discovery men had been on the moon prior to the recent landing on the moon by the international team orchestrated by NASA to truly unite the world by allowing a team of scientists from all over the Earth to explore the moon.
Only to discover somebody had already been there.
A small British flag had been found on the moon, ragged and torn, and pinned to a piece of paper which was a legal summons to a Mr Arnold Bedford, and there were enough details by which to locate the man. A small group found Bedford and learnt he and Cavor and a Miss Katherine Calendar had travelled to the moon following Cavor's discovery of a substance named after himself.
Cavorite.
Cavorite was capable of cutting off the force of gravity, and with it coated on a blindingly simple space ship it was capable of heading out into space without the need for rockets, tonnes and tonnes of fuel, and it would never need to separate sections of itself so it could travel into space without being slowed down by the weight of the engines.
And it had all been created by a scientist in a time where rockets were still, largely, in their infancy and used mostly for war in a limited capacity. Bedford had told them a remarkable story of how he and his two friends had encountered an alien race living on the moon. The Selenites had captured Cavor and Miss Calendar, and the sphere, making it clear in Bedford's mind they were hostile. Eventually, Bedford and Miss Calendar had escaped in the hastily repaired sphere and returned to Earth, leaving Cavor behind with his Cavorite secret after being confronted with the truth; the Selenites, hearing from Cavor of humanity's warring past, had come to the conclusion humans were dangerous and to ensure their survival planned on keeping Cavor on the moon.
He merely made it easier by staying in order to learn more about the lunar civilisation.
Only now it had been unintentionally destroyed. A simple germ taken from Earth by Cavor in the form of a terrible and simple common cold had been taken to the moon, and it wiped out the entire race, destroying their city. The lunar expedition sent in the present day had found signs of the Selenites, but they had all died out, and their city had been destroyed. Bedford, confronted by the truth the Selenites had actually been a peaceful race, had told them where the sphere had crashed.
The search off the coast of Zanzibar had been quickly and carefully planned out, and teams of divers had spent months search endlessly for the sphere. NASA and other space exploration organisations were desperate to find the sphere - while Bedford and managed to collect Cavor's notebooks and NASA had been trying to understand the formulas contained in them and they had managed to create a near successful batch of Cavorite using a trial and error system using Bedford's meagre knowledge of what he had seen in Cavor's house in Dymchurch, they needed the sphere to answer a few questions although they were willing and able to explore the possibilities themselves.
Scientists were constantly studying the process that made Cavorite, and they knew it was only a matter of time before they created a batch that worked as well as the one which had once gotten Bedford and party to the moon.
NASA needed Cavorite technology, and while they didn't need the sphere exactly they knew it would make it easier for them to devise a more efficient space vehicle. With it they could explore the Moon, Mars, and other bodies in space; because of its anti-gravity properties, Cavorite held the key to the stars.
The search lasted for a month until finally, they discovered the sphere, twenty miles away from the coast of Zanzibar. The sphere was covered in barnacles and badly corroded, but thanks to the internal construction which relied more on glass than iron, it was well preserved. When they found the sphere, NASA found inside the sphere's wreck a second water and airtight compartment, containing some more of Cavor's books. They contained the final formulas on Cavorite that he had perfected, and after six months of work, NASA successfully launched a small group of spheres into space propelled by Cavorite.
The age of space flight was now upon humanity.
No longer would rockets be used, although many scientists advocated and encouraged the continual study of them regardless. In the meantime, a planned expedition to Mars was planned out while new spheres containing laboratories, equipment, and personnel were trained for the upcoming flight…
Soon the exploration of the solar system would begin.