Rocket Man: How Robert Goddard Turned Science Fiction Into Reality

In ‘This Week in History,’ facing ridicule and minimal support, a lone physicist’s technological breakthrough created the foundation for space travel.

Goddard watches a New Mexico launch from a safe distance. U.S. Air Force. Public Domain

On Oct. 5, 1865, in Baltimore a large gathering of prestigious men assembled at No. 21 Union Square. There was immense excitement about what the speaker would present. His idea would alter their lives, indeed the lives of the nation.

“It is perhaps reserved for us to become the Columbuses of this unknown world,” the speaker stated. “Only enter into my plans, and second me with all your power, and I will lead you to its conquest, and its name shall be added to those of the thirty-six States which compose this Great Union.

“I have looked at the question in all its bearings,” he continued, “I have resolutely attacked it, and by incontrovertible calculations I find that a projectile endowed with an initial velocity of 12,000 yards per second, and aimed at the moon, must necessarily reach it.”

The speaker was Impey Barbicane and the idea was stupendous! And, of course, they were both fictional, originating from Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon.”

A Vision for Space Travel

On Oct. 5, 1882, precisely 17 years after this fictional scientific meeting, Robert Hutchings Goddard was born. Growing up a sickly child in Massachusetts, Goddard spent much of his time indoors, reading science fiction, like Verne and, later, H.G. Wells. His time was also spent working on his own scientific experiments. The idea of reaching space was firmly implanted in his brain. He recalled how when he was a teenager in Worcester that he climbed a cherry tree to prune it, and looking out over the horizon, he imagined creating “some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars.”

Robert Goddard. NASA. Public Domain

Goddard proved a brilliant physics and mathematics student, even if that brilliance came with a dose of scientific madness. For example, in 1907, while pursuing his bachelor of science degree at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, he launched a rocket in the basement of the school’s physics building. The rocket was fueled by powder, as rockets traditionally were, and its explosion caught the attention of the school’s administration. Rather than harshly reprimanding Goddard, they encouraged him in his pursuits.

He earned his degree the following year and then attended Clark University where he earned his masters and doctorate in 1910 and 1911, respectively. He remained at Clark as an honorary fellow before accepting a research fellowship at Princeton University in 1912. The promising scientific career, however, nearly came to a sudden and tragic end. Goddard was diagnosed with tuberculosis in March 1913, and doctors gave him a grim prognosis: He had two weeks to live.

It would not be until 1914 before he finally recuperated. Despite the illness, he completed his mathematical theory for rocket propulsion.

Help From the Smithsonian

Both Princeton and Columbia University offered him professorships, but he was concerned that the workload would hinder his opportunities for experiments, and thus accepted a position at Clark University. During the summer of 1914, he received the first of his rocket patents: one for the use of liquid fuel and another for creating a rocket that used solid fuel in multiple stages. In 1915, he made a major breakthrough by proving that rockets could produce thrust in a vacuum, which ensured, at least theoretically, that rocket engines could be used in space.

Robert Goddard at Clark University. He has been recognized as the father of American rocketry and as one of the pioneers in the theoretical exploration of space. Public Domain

Goddard’s experiments were not cheap, and he had been personally funding his research. He knew that in order to make major experimental breakthroughs he needed financial backing. On Sept. 27, 1916, he wrote to the Smithsonian Institution regarding his promising rocket technology, stating, “I feel that it is to the Smithsonian Institution alone that I must look, now that I cannot continue the work unassisted.”

The Institution was impressed with the letter and the scientific and mathematical information provided. In early January, the Smithsonian informed him they would provide Goddard with a $5,000 grant ($130,o00 today) from its Hodgkins Fund for his “atmospheric research.”

The Critical Press

Goddard’s research also came before the United States military, as America entered World War I a few months after Goddard received confirmation of his grant. During the war, he worked for the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and by 1918, he had developed the bazooka. Although the war came to an end before the weapon could be used, it became an important element for the military in upcoming wars, including World War II.

In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, officially bringing hostilities to an end, and Goddard was made a full professor at Clark University. But there was something else that stood out personally for the physicist. He had written a treatise entitled “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes,” which the Smithsonian Institution published in January 1920. The paper discussed his theory for rocket propulsion and rockets in space as a means to reach the limits of the atmosphere and beyond, stating, “The greatest altitude at which soundings of the atmosphere have been made by balloons, namely, about 20 miles, is but a small fraction of the height to which the atmosphere is supposed to extend.”

According to his calculations, he stated that a high-efficiency rocket, powered by “propellant material” (at this time, powder), should be able “to send small masses even to such great distances as to escape the earth’s attraction.”

The Smithsonian Institution issued a press release—now lost to history—on Jan. 11, 1920, about the treatise. Escaping the “earth’s attraction” was one thing, but the press took exception to reaching the moon. The next day’s headline for The New York Times began with “Believes Rocket Can Reach Moon." The Boston Herald chimed in with the headline: “New Rocket Devised by Prof. Goddard May Hit Face of the Moon.”

On Jan. 13, two days after the press release, The New York Times excoriated Goddard. It conceded that in order to reach the edge of Earth’s atmosphere “Goddard’s multi-charge rocket is a practicable, and therefore promising, device.” But it claimed that Goddard’s suggestion that a rocket could reach the moon “would ... deny a fundamental law of dynamics.”

The Times dismissed Goddard, stating, “He seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. But there are such things as intentional mistakes or oversights, and, as it happens, Jules Verne, who also knew a thing or two in assorted sciences … deliberately seems to make the same mistake that Professor Goddard seems to make. … That was one of Verne’s few scientific slips … pardonable enough in him as a romancer, but its like is not so easily explained when made by a savant who isn’t writing a novel of adventure.”

Trial and Error

From this point on, Goddard became more reclusive and forever viewed the press in a negative light. The criticisms and the insulting comparison to Verne, however, did not dissuade or slow Goddard in his pursuits. It also did nothing to change the Smithsonian’s faith in him. The Institution continued to provide him funding.

In 1924, he made one of his best decisions in marrying Esther Christine Kisk, who would be one of his biggest supporters—even after his death. That same year, he made a breakthrough in engine development. Although he had been consulting part-time with the U.S. Army on solid fuel-powered rocket technology, he had been working to create his liquid-fueled rocket. His breakthroughs caught the attention of the New York Times, and this time, their tune had changed.

“Hopes to Reach Moon With a Giant Rocket; Dr. Robert H. Goddard May Realize Jules Verne’s Fantasy,” the headline read. And this time, the article’s comparison between Goddard and Verne was meant to be complimentary. “What Jules Verne first conceived as a fantasy of the mind has become the aim of a scientific inquiry,” the article stated.

“What Dr. Goddard will undertake to prove in practice on a limited scale is what he already has established in his laboratory. Once the principle has been demonstrated in practical application, the time will have come to build other rockets of sufficient size, speed and endurance to rise any desired distance; first, aimed toward the moon; later on, perhaps, for even longer flights.”

Goddard had experimented with liquid oxygen and hydrogen, liquid propane, liquid methane, and gasoline. Trial and error was the practice of Goddard, until he had finally worked out at least most of the issues with his liquid fuel-powered rocket. He finally concluded “the most practical combination” was liquid oxygen and gasoline, and it was this combination that he would use in his historic launch. Less than two years after the rather encouraging New York Times article was published, Goddard stood in a field at his aunt’s farm in Auburn, Massachusetts, hoping his creation would work.

A ‘Kitty Hawk’ Moment

Robert Goddard, bundled against the cold weather of March 16, 1926, holds the launching frame of his most notable invention—the first liquid-fueled rocket. Esther C. Goddard. Public Domain

It was exactly 100 years ago during this week in history, on March 16, 1926, that Goddard, joined by Henry Sachs and P.M. Roope, of Clark University, along with his wife Esther, who was filming the event, lit the rocket. The slender 10-foot-long rocket, which included its two-foot-long motor, remained stationary, held in place by a metal stand. The flames jetted out from the motor. Five seconds later, it remained. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. Finally, after 20 seconds, the rocket blasted into the air. Its ascent reached 41 feet and lasted all of 2.5 seconds. But his rocket worked.

No newspapers covered the event. In fact, Goddard and the others kept quiet about the launch (though he did report the results to the Smithsonian). Perhaps it was because the results were far from what the 1924 New York Times article had conjured. Nonetheless, about three years later, on July 17, 1929, Goddard successfully, and quietly, launched the first rocket to carry scientific instruments (that is, a barometer and a camera).

Funding remained minimal until Goddard became friends with Charles Lindbergh, the famous aviator, who connected him with the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation. The Foundation helped Goddard establish a new research center in Roswell, New Mexico.

Robert Goddard with a rocket in his workshop at Roswell, N.M. in October 1935. NASA

Due Recognition

It was not until a decade after Goddard’s first flight that he officially published a paper about the event. The paper, entitled “Liquid Propellant Rocket Development,” was published by the Smithsonian Institution and discussed all of his recent work. Goddard remained secretive about his work for numerous reasons, one of them being that he feared the Germans would steal his technology. When the Nazis developed the V-2 rocket, he was certain they had.

Goddard consulted the U.S. military during WWII, providing valuable insight. He died of cancer at the relatively young age of 62 on Aug. 10, 1945, the day after the United States dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan.

His wife continued to champion his work, and with the growing Cold War arms race, the need for rocket technology was exponential. His work proved pivotal for NASA. In 1959, NASA announced that its first space research laboratory would be named the Goddard Space Flight Center. It was officially dedicated on March 16, 1961—on the 35th anniversary of Goddard’s historic launch. Additionally, NASA paid $1 million (nearly $11 million today) to the Goddard estate for the use of the physicist’s patents.

The March 16, 1926 launch of Goddard’s liquid-fueled rocket became known as the “‘Kitty Hawk' event of space exploration.” In 1969, fiction became reality when NASA, using liquid fuel-powered rockets, put the first man on the moon, an accomplishment so spectacular that it even led The New York Times to issue a long overdue apology to Goddard.

“It is difficult to say what is impossible,” Goddard once said, “for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.”

Or as that fictional leading man, Impey Barbicane, asserted, “This journey, like all previous ones, was purely imaginary.”

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