When Worlds Collide discussion

If anything else: it's 1932; how do you make a space ark with vacume tubes and crystal radios? Could it have been done? Now that's a good read.

Vacuum tubes and crystal radios aren't so much the limiting factor. Consider that when that when the first manned space flights took place, the technology that today fits into a smart phone would have filled a small auditorium. The technology and miniaturization leap between the 1930s and 1960s is quite small compared to what's happened in the fifty years since.

The more "fantastic" element is simple rocket power. It wasn't until the 1940s that Germany developed a rocket that was able to carry a payload weighing about a ton for a distance of all of 300 km (about 200 mi). The 1930s couldn't touch even that, and the WWC project would have required something like hundredfold payload and a thousand times the distance (or more, for both).

Of course, the premise was that, with sufficient private funding and American ingenuity, anything is possible.

And, the book is about the human psychology involved, not the technology. For the latter, suspension of disbelief is the order of the day.