The following is a list of fictional astronauts as imagined before the Space Age. The astronauts on this list appear in stories released prior to or shortly after the inception of Project Mercury in 1958.
Early period Name(s)Appeared inProgram / Mission / SpacecraftFictional dateWan HuScientific American (1909)N/A2000 BCWan Hu was a legendary Chinese official who was said to have become the first astronaut by reaching space using a chair affixed with several dozen rockets. The earliest known version of the story comes from a 1909 edition of Scientific American, which names the official as "Wang Tu" and dates his voyage to "about 2,000 years B.C.", more than 3,000 years before the invention of gunpowder rockets in China.