On this day in 1926, the first man to give hope to dreams of space travel, Robert Goddard, successfully launched the world’s first liquid-fuelled rocket at Auburn, Massachusetts.
Goddard, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1882, became fascinated with the idea of space travel after reading the HG 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 be propelled 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 US patents for his concepts of a multistage rocket and a liquid-fuelled 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-fuelled 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 16 March 1926, Goddard accomplished the world’s first launching of a liquid-fuelled rocket from his Aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn. The rocket was 10 feet tall (about 3 metres), constructed out of thin pipes, and was fueled by liquid oxygen and gasoline.
Information courtesy of: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-liquid-fueled-rocket.
