In 1959, NASA posthumously named the Goddard Space Flight Center in honor of Robert Goddard’s lifetime of work in rocketry, physics, and space travel. But his journey from a youth spent reading science fiction tales of space travel to that point involved years of skepticism from the media and public, as well as the competing interests of corporations, the military, academia, and the government.
As a student at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Goddard was already experimenting with rockets in the school basement; after the completion of his degree and subsequent Ph.D., he went on to teach at Clark University, continuing his research. In 1915, his experiment on thrust in vacuums proved that rockets would work in outer space, despite the lack of air to “push on,” a huge step forward for the future of space travel. The next year, the Smithsonian Institution recognized the importance of his research and provided him with a grant. During World War I, his work for the U.S. Army and Navy furthered his theories – and provided the basis for the development of the bazooka.
In 1920, Goddard published a paper that suggested a rocket could reach the Moon. Public response was merciless, with the New York Times printing an editorial that called Goddard’s work “a severe strain on credulity” on Jan. 13. Only a few years later, though, on March 16, 1926, Goddard accomplished the first launch of a rocket powered by liquid fuel. He would go on to develop and patent the concept of multi-stage rockets, liquid-fuel cooling, and gimbals and gyroscopes for steering rockets. He also was responsible for mathematical theories of rocket propulsion and escape velocity. Though he died of throat cancer at only 62, his widow Esther devoted much of her life to filing patents for his work and bringing attention to his legacy. Today, Goddard is widely recognized as the “Father of Modern Rocketry.”
