THE MAN WHO SHOT MACHINES OUTSIDE OF EARTH

Table of Contents

ROBERT GODDARD

On March 16, 1926, in a cabbage field in Auburn, Massachusetts, Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket. It climbed about 41 feet, flew for under three seconds, and landed 184 feet away. It was an unimpressive flight that changed what engineers believed was possible. Solid-fuel rockets were fireworks and weapons; liquid propellants meant throttle, control, and range, the basis of every rocket that has since reached orbit.

In 1919, Goddard's Smithsonian-published paper laid out the mathematics of high-altitude flight and even floated reaching the Moon. Over the following decades he pioneered gyroscopic stabilization, gimbaled thrust, fuel-pump designs, and early multistage thinking. By his death in 1945 he held over 200 patents, and the architecture of the modern rocket is largely visible in his notebooks.

In 1920, The New York Times mocked the idea that a rocket could work in a vacuum, implying he lacked a high-school grasp of physics. He was right and the paper was wrong, but the ridicule stung, and the "Times" did not issue a correction until 1969, as Apollo 11 headed for the Moon. Goddard did something that did him no favours, he grew secretive, distrusted outsiders, and relocated to the isolation of Roswell, New Mexico, with funding secured by Charles Lindbergh from the Guggenheims.

Goddard worked as a lone experimentalist, rarely publishing details or building a school of followers. Meanwhile, German engineers, including a young Wernher von Braun, were scaling up through collaboration and state funding, and their V-2 became the first long-range ballistic missile. However, his technical vision was ahead of everyone's, while his refusal to share it limited his direct impact. The Navy used his work on jet-assisted takeoff in the war, but he never saw the space age he had predicted.

NASA named its Maryland flight center after him in 1959, and in 1960 the U.S. government settled a patent claim for $1 million, a tacit admission that American rocketry stood on his work. Every launch of a rocket is a late vindication of a stubborn man in a cabbage field, and a reminder that being right early is not enough to win without collaborators.

365 men who changed the world.

Kamikun John, Author 366 days of wisdom.