What is the oldest story in which a kid made a spaceship out of junk?

Question

What is the oldest story in which a kid made a spaceship out of junk? In the 1960s I read an inspiring English-language children's book that was based on the premise of kids building a spaceship from materials found in a junkyard, but it seems to me that this was a common trope, so I am asking for either a novel or a short story, whichever was published earlier. I was disappointed to find that my community didn't have a junkyard, though my mother was relieved.

Answer 1

In Eleanor Cameron's 1954 novel The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, two boys build a spaceship out of odds and ends (old pieces of scrap metal and a derelict rowboat) after seeing an ad requesting one in the newspaper.

At the behest of Mr. Bass, the little man who placed the ad, they (and their pet chicken) fly their spaceship to the Mushroom Planet, a small satellite of Earth that only Mr. Bass knows about.

This is the first in a series of books involving these boys, their homemade spaceship, Mr. Bass, and the Mushroom Planet. I recall having an epic fight with my brother over who got to read the last book in the series (Time and Mr. Bass) first.

Answer 2

The scientist Dolph Haertel was a character in several James Blish stories. In Welcome to Mars (1967), serialized as "The Hour Before Earthrise" in 1966, Dolph Haertel is a teenager who discovers antigravity and turns his treehouse into a spaceship to make the first voyage to Mars.

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?32896 1

I can't help thinking that Blish was inspired to make a more adult and plausible version of stories in children's literature.

I believe that in the early 1960s there was a picture book where cartoon characters, I think Huckleberry Hound and his friends, built a homemade rocket for a moon trip which didn't get very far off the ground.

In Rusty's Space Ship, 1957, by Evelyn Shipley Lampman, two kids build a play spaceship out of assorted junk. But as it happens a piece of metal they find in a junkyard and nail onto the wooden ship is actually a tiny alien spaceship. The alien, a lizard man named Tripetha or something, shows up to reclaim his spaceship. (I'm not sure how he fit into a spaceship which was much smaller than him.) Since his spaceship is attached to the Kid's play spaceship he takes it and them on his search for his homeworld Eopee.

The book is mentioned in a number of questions.

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/235351/childs-science-fiction-book-about-kids-in-space-with-a-metal-disk-and-an-alien/235353#235353[2]

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/235351/childs-science-fiction-book-about-kids-in-space-with-a-metal-disk-and-an-alien/235355#235355[3]

So kids build a play spaceship out of assorted stuff, some acquired from a junkyard, and their spaceship actually works, though due to alien technology instead of theirs.

[Added 01-06-2021. I just noticed that The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron has a date of 1954 and not 1964. Thus it was published about 3 years before Rusty's Space Ship.]

In Robert heinlein's Rocket Ship Galileo (1947), teenage boys convert a rocket airplane into a manned spaceship capable of making a moon landing and return, under the instruction of a brilliant scientist who has invented a new application of atomic energy for space flight. Obviously none of the characters has millions of dollars to buy expensive equipment, though I doubt where they get anything as cheaply as from a junkyard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Ship_Galileo

I remember an early science fiction story from the 1930s in which an alien crashed on Earth and built or grew a new spaceship out of very common and ordinary materials. It might have been a novel by Fletcher Pratt, such as Invaders from Rigel (1931,1960)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?7453

Or maybe Alien Planet (1962).

Surprisingly, I couldn't find a trope about kids building a spaceship out of junkyard materials at TV Tropes.