FIRST LIQUID-FUELED ROCKET:

March 16, 1926

The first man to give hope to dreams of space travel is American Robert H.
Goddard, who successfully launches the world's first liquid-fueled rocket at
Auburn, Massachusetts, on March 16, 1926. The rocket traveled for 2.5 seconds at
a speed of about 60 mph, reaching an altitude of 41 feet and landing 184 feet
away. The rocket was 10 feet tall, constructed out of thin pipes, and was fueled
by liquid oxygen and gasoline.The Chinese developed the first military rockets
in the early 13th century using gunpowder and probably built firework rockets at
an earlier date. Gunpowder-propelled military rockets appeared in Europe
sometime in the 13th century, and in the 19th century British engineers made
several important advances in early rocket science. In 1903, an obscure Russian
inventor named Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky published a treatise on the theoretical
problems of using rocket engines in space, but it was not until Robert Goddard's
work in the 1920s that anyone began to build the modern, liquid-fueled type of
rocket that by the early 1960s would be launching humans into space.Goddard,
born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1882, became fascinated with the idea of
space travel after reading the H.G. Wells' science fiction novel War of the
Worlds in 1898. He began building gunpowder rockets in 1907 while a student at
the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and continued his rocket experiments as a
physics doctoral student and then physics professor at Clark University. He was
the first to prove that rockets can propel in an airless vacuum like space and
was also the first to explore mathematically the energy and thrust potential of
various fuels, including liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. He received U.S.
patents for his concepts of a multistage rocket and a liquid-fueled rocket, and
secured grants from the Smithsonian Institute to continue his research.In 1919,
his classic treatise A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes was published by the
Smithsonian. The work outlined his mathematical theories of rocket propulsion
and proposed the future launching of an unmanned rocket to the moon. The press
picked up on Goddard's moon-rocket proposal and for the most part ridiculed the
scientist's innovative ideas. In January 1920, The New York Times printed an
editorial declaring that Dr. Goddard "seems to lack the knowledge ladled out
daily in high schools" because he thought that rocket thrust would be effective
beyond the earth's atmosphere. (Three days before the first Apollo lunar-landing
mission in July 1969, the Times printed a correction to this editorial.)In
December 1925, Goddard tested a liquid-fueled rocket in the physics building at
Clark University. He wrote that the rocket, which was secured in a static rack,
"operated satisfactorily and lifted its own weight." On March 16, 1926, Goddard
accomplished the world's first launching of a liquid-fueled rocket from his Aunt
Effie's farm in Auburn.Goddard continued his innovative rocket work until his
death in 1945. His work was recognized by the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, who
helped secure him a grant from the Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of
Aeronautics. Using these funds, Goddard set up a testing ground in Roswell, New
Mexico, which operated from 1930 until 1942. During his tenure there, he made 31
successful flights, including one of a rocket that reached 1.7 miles off the
ground in 22.3 seconds. Meanwhile, while Goddard conducted his limited tests
without official U.S. support, Germany took the initiative in rocket development
and by September 1944 was launching its V-2 guided missiles against Britain to
devastating effect. During the war, Goddard worked in developing a jet-thrust
booster for a U.S. Navy seaplane. He would not live to see the major advances in
rocketry in the 1950s and '60s that would make his dreams of space travel a
reality. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is named in
his honor.