Robert Goddard (scientist)
Robert Hutchins Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945) was one of the pioneers of modern rocketry. Though his work in the field was revolutionary, he was often ridiculed for his theories, which were ahead of their time.
Goddard was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and became interested in space even before attending Clark University and Princeton. His interest was sparked when he read H.G. Wells' science fiction classic The War of the Worlds when he was 16 years old. By 1914, he was designing rocket motors, with financial assistance from the Smithsonian Institution. By 1919, he was writing about the possibilities of moon flight.
Goddard launched the first liquid-fuelled rocket on March 16, 1926 at Auburn, Massachusetts. His journal entry of the event was notable for its laconic understatement: "The first flight with a rocket using liquid propellants was made yesterday at Aunt Effie's farm." The rocket, which was dubbed "Nell" and about the size of a human arm, rose just 41 feet during a 2 1/2-second flight, but it was an important demonstration that liquid fuel propellants were possible.
Goddard was suspicious of others and often worked alone, which limited the ripple effect from his work. His unsociability was a result of the harsh criticism that he received from both other scientists and the media. After one of his experiments in 1929, a local Worcester newspaper carried the headline "Moon rocket misses target by 238,799 1/2 miles." Most notable however was the, retrospectively funny, response of The New York Times to Goddard's landmark paper, "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes." The Times lambasted his research because "everybody knows" rockets won't travel in the vacuum of space, where there's nothing to push against. Goddard, the article claimed, "seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
Eventually Goddard headed out to Roswell, New Mexico—long before the area became the center of the UFO craze—where he worked in near isolation for decades. Though he brought his work in rocketry to the attention of the United States Army, he was rebuffed, as the Army largely failed to grasp the military application (except for the bazooka, a prototype of which he had demonstrated in November, 1918, shortly before the end of World War I). Ironically, it was Nazi Germany that took the most interest in his research. Wernher von Braun did most of his work from Goddard's theories. The V-2 was extremely similar to Goddard's designs.
In 1969, just days before the Apollo 11 moon landing, the New York Times retracted the editorial it had published 49 years before on Goddard. "Further investigation and experimentation," said the paper, "have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error."
Goddard was awarded 214 patents for his work, most of them coming after his death in 1945. The Goddard Space Flight Center, which was established in 1959, is named in his honor.
See also: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Hermann Oberth, spacecraft propulsion
Quotes
- "It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow." (From his high school graduation oration, "On Taking Things for Granted", June 1904)
- "On the afternoon of October 19, 1899, I climbed a tall cherry tree and, armed with a saw which I still have, and a hatchet, started to trim the dead limbs from the cherry tree. It was one of the quiet, colorful afternoons of sheer beauty which we have in October in New England, and as I looked towards the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars. I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended for existence at last seemed very purposive." (Written later, in an autobiographical sketch)
- "Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it; once realized, it becomes commonplace." (His response to the New York Times, 1920)
