APOGEE STAFF
More than a century ago, the man who would become known as the father of modern rocketry was a stargazing teenage boy with an unquenchable thirst for discovery. It was the fall of 1899, and Robert H. Goddard had just scaled a cherry tree at his home in Worcester, Massachusetts, before staring into the vastness of the sky. Inspired by the works of author H.G. Wells, Goddard wanted to be the scientist who would one day invent a device that would reach the red planet. “I looked toward the fields at the east,” he said, according to a historical account by NASA, “imagining how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars.” For the rest of Goddard’s life, he observed that day on the cherry tree as Anniversary Day, a commemoration of his greatest inspiration. It would launch a career of unprecedented discovery, despite a chorus of skeptics and nonbelievers every step of the way.
Unhappy neighbors
Goddard was born on a Worcester farm on October 5, 1882. A frail boy who often suffered from illness, he read voraciously about science. He graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1908 and earned his master’s and doctorate at Clark University, where he pursued the idea of fueling a rocket with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, according to an account from the New England Historical Society.
His views on launching a liquid-fueled rocket and then propelling it into the vacuum of space drew critics. The New York Times, for example, scoffed at the idea. “That Professor Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action and reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react — to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”
In the face of such withering criticism, Goddard didn’t quit. He launched his first liquid-fueled rocket from a relative’s farm in Auburn, Massachusetts, on March 16, 1926. This time, the people complaining were his neighbors. That first flight, which traveled 12.5 meters into the air, inspired him to try more, so he continued using the family farm for several more launches. But rocket launches are noisy — and scary — if you happen to be near the landing zone. One newspaper headline announced, “Giant Rocket Alarms Many,” according to the historical society account. Another sarcastic headline stated, “Moon Rocket Misses Target by 238,799 1/2 Miles!” The negative attention took its toll. The state fire marshal ordered an end to the tests, so Goddard persuaded the U.S. military to let him use the grounds of Camp Devens, a summer training facility for National Guard troops in Massachusetts. He worked there for about a year.
That first liquid-propelled launch, despite the controversy, was an important demonstration that liquid fuels and oxidizers were potential propellants for larger rockets, according to the historical society. The flight only lasted 2.5 seconds before the rocket crashed into a cabbage field. This humble patch of land is now a National Historic Landmark called the Goddard Launching Site.
Maybe he was right after all
As Goddard pressed on in his quest for space travel, he drew the attention of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, who turned to wealthy friends to line up financial support. Lindbergh persuaded Harry Guggenheim of Guggenheim Foundation fame to support Goddard, who was able to take his test flights to the less-populated expanse around Roswell, New Mexico.
Goddard spent the next dozen years conducting research and tests that would lead to the creation of rockets capable of traveling in space. Goddard is credited with 214 patents, although 131 were filed after his death, according to the Smithsonian Institution. Fourteen years after his death, on May 1, 1959, NASA established the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Eventually, he would be acknowledged as the father of modern rocketry, but he didn’t live long enough to witness the acquiescence of one of his fiercest critics. In 1969, some 49 years after its editorial criticizing Goddard’s understanding of basic physics, The New York Times wrote a correction — the day after the Apollo 11 moon launch that benefited from Goddard’s inventions. “Further investigation and experimentation 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.”