HISTORY84 - Robert Goddard - Father of Modern Rocketry
As an aerospace engineer, one of
my heroes was Robert Goddard, generally acknowledged to be the father of modern
rocketry, the science of rockets and rocket propulsion. This blog will discuss the life of Robert
Goddard and his contributions to the development of rockets.
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After a short introduction, I
will cover Goddard’s early life and education, his research in Massachusetts;
his experiments in Roswell, New Mexico; his final years and death; his legacy;
and finally, his impact on rocketry. My principal sources
include: Robert H. Goddard,”
wikipedia.com; “Robert Goddard - American Professor and Inventor,”
britannica.com; “Robert Goddard,” famousscientists.org; “Dr. Robert H. Goddard,
American Rocketry Pioneer,” nasa.gov; “Robert H. Goddard: American Rocket Pioneer,” siarchives.si.edu;
“Robert Goddard Was the Father of American Rocketry. But Did He Have Much Impact?”,
smithsonianmag.com; “Highlights from the Life of Robert H. Goddard,”
goddardmemorial.org; “Robert Goddard, Class of 1908 and Father of Modern
Rocketry,” wpi.edu; plus, numerous other online sources. Introduction Definitions: A rocket is a vehicle that propels
itself in one direction by ejecting a jet of gas in the opposite
direction. The gas that is ejected is
produced by the burning of self-contained fuel in the combustion chamber of the
rocket engine. A nozzle expands and accelerates the
hot engine exhaust gases to high velocities in order to produce thrust, the
amount of push the rocket engine provides to the rocket. Thrust is dependent on both the mass of the
gas ejected and the ejected speed. There
are two main types of rocket fuel used on modern rockets: solid and liquid. Liquid rockets require an oxidizer to burn
the fuel. Rocket efficiency is a measure of how much of the chemical energy in
the fuel is converted to motion of the rocket.  Robert Hutchings Goddard (1882 -
1945) was an American engineer, professor, physicist, and
inventor who is credited with creating and building the world's
first liquid-fueled rocket.
Goddard successfully launched his rocket on March 16, 1926, ushering in
an era of space flight and innovation. He
and his team launched 34 rockets between 1926 and 1941, achieving
altitudes as high as 1.7 miles and speeds as fast 700 mph. Goddard's work as both theorist and
engineer anticipated many of the developments that would make spaceflight
possible. He has been called the man who
ushered in the Space Age. Two of
Goddard's 214 patented inventions, a multi-stage rocket (1914), and a
liquid-fueled rocket (1914), were important milestones toward spaceflight. His 1919 monograph A Method of
Reaching Extreme Altitudes is considered one of the classic texts of
20th-century rocket science. Goddard successfully pioneered modern methods
such as gyroscopic control and steerable thrust to allow rockets to
control their flight path effectively.  Although his work in the field was
revolutionary, Goddard received little public support, moral or monetary, for
his research and development work. He
was a shy person, and rocket research was not considered a suitable pursuit for
a physics professor. The press and other
scientists ridiculed his theories of extraterrestrial spaceflight. As a result, he became protective of his
privacy and his work. Years after his death, at the dawn of
the Space Age, Goddard came to be recognized as one of the founding fathers of
modern rocketry. He not only recognized
early on the potential of rockets for atmospheric research, ballistic
missiles, and space travel, but also was the first to
scientifically study, design, construct, and fly the precursory rockets needed
to eventually implement those ideas. NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center was named in Goddard's honor in 1959. He was also inducted into
the International Aerospace Hall of Fame and National Aviation
Hall of Fame in 1966, and the International Space Hall of
Fame in 1976. Early Life, Education, and Inspiration:
1882 - 1912 Robert Goddard was born on October 5,
1882 in Worcester, Massachusetts to Nahum Danford Goddard (a
bookkeeper, salesman, and machine-shop owner of modest means) and Fannie Louise
Goddard. Shortly after his birth, the
family moved to Boston. In 1898, his
mother contracted tuberculosis and they moved back to Worcester for the clear
air. With the post-Civil War Industrial
Revolution, when Worcester factories were producing machinery and goods for the
burgeoning country, and the electrification of American cities in the
1880s, the young Goddard became interested in science - specifically,
engineering and technology. From
childhood on he displayed great curiosity about physical phenomena and a bent
toward inventiveness. Goddard's father
further encouraged Robert's scientific interest by providing him with a
telescope, a microscope, and a subscription to Scientific American. Robert developed a fascination with flight,
first with kites and then with balloons. He became a thorough diarist and documenter
of his work - a skill that would greatly benefit his later career.  The young Goddard was a thin and frail
boy, almost always in fragile health. He
suffered from stomach problems, pleurisy, colds, and bronchitis, and he fell
two years behind his classmates. He
became a voracious reader, regularly visiting the local public library to
borrow books on the physical sciences. The teenage Goddard watched swallows
and chimney swifts from the porch of his home, noting how subtly the birds
moved their wings to control their flight. He noted how remarkably the birds used their
tail feathers, which he called the birds' equivalent of airplane control
surfaces. After reading H. G. Wells’ science
fiction novel “The War of The Worlds” at age 16, Robert became fascinated with
space flight. As his health improved, Goddard
continued his formal schooling in 1901 as a 19-year-old sophomore at South
High Community School in Worcester. He excelled in his coursework, and his peers
twice elected him class president.
Making up for lost time, he studied books on mathematics, astronomy,
mechanics, and composition from the school library. The high school student summed up his
ideas on space travel in a proposed article, "The Navigation of
Space," which he submitted to the Popular Science News. The journal's editor returned it, saying that
they could not use it "in the near future." Goddard graduated from high school in
1904 as valedictorian. Goddard then enrolled
at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in 1904. He quickly impressed the head of the physics
department with his thirst for knowledge, and was hired as a laboratory
assistant and tutor. While still an undergraduate, Goddard
wrote a paper proposing a method for balancing airplanes in flight using
gyro-stabilization. He submitted the
idea to Scientific American, which published the paper in
1907. Goddard later wrote in his diaries
that he believed his paper was the first proposal of a way to automatically
stabilize aircraft in flight. His proposal came around the same time as
other scientists were making breakthroughs in developing
functional gyroscopes. While studying physics at WPI, ideas
came to Goddard's mind that sometimes seemed impossible, but he was compelled
to record them for future investigation.
He purchased some cloth-covered notebooks and began filling them with a
variety of thoughts, mostly concerning his dream of space travel. He set down a particularly complex concept in
June 1908: sending a camera around distant planets, guided by measurements of
gravity along the trajectory, and returning to earth.  Goddard received
his B.S. degree in Physics from Worcester Polytechnic in 1908, and
after serving there for a year as an instructor in physics, in the fall of
1909, he began his graduate studies at Clark University in Worcester. Goddard’s first writing on the
possibility of a liquid-fueled rocket came on February 2, 1909. He had begun to study ways of increasing a
rocket's efficiency using liquid fuels. He
wrote in his notebook about using liquid hydrogen as a fuel with liquid oxygen
as the oxidizer. Goddard received
his M.A. degree in Physics from Clark University in 1910, and then
stayed at Clark to complete his PhD in Physics in 1911. Research in Massachusetts:
1912 - 1930 After getting his PhD in 1911, Goddard
spent another year at Clark as an honorary fellow in physics, and in 1912, he
accepted a research fellowship at Princeton University's Palmer Physical Laboratory. However, he left Princeton the following
year suffering from tuberculosis, and returned to Worcester, where he began a prolonged process
of recovery at home. His doctors did not
expect him to live. He decided he should spend time
outside in the fresh air and walk for exercise, and he gradually
improved. While he was recovering, Goddard first
explored mathematically the practicality of using rocket power to reach high
altitudes and escape the gravity of Earth (escape velocity). Encouraged, he wrote
his first rocket patent applications. In 1914, two of his patents were accepted; one
was for a multi-stage rocket using solid fuel, and the other for a rocket that
used liquid fuel. These two
patents would eventually become important milestones in the history of rocketry. With his health improving again,
Goddard accepted a part-time position as an instructor at Clark University
where he conducted further research into rocketry.  In his small laboratory at Clark, he was the first to prove
that rocket propulsion can take place in a vacuum, needing no air to push
against. He ordered numerous supplies that could be used to build
rocket prototypes for launch, and spent much of 1915 in preparation for his
first tests. In 1915, he launched his first gunpowder
rocket outside the university building, but realized the rocket was very
inefficient in converting energy into motion.
The following year he used special nozzles to improve the efficiency of
his rockets. By mid-summer of 1915,
Goddard had obtained much higher rocket efficiencies and exhaust velocities in
static tests. Few would recognize it at
the time, but these results were a major breakthrough. Goddard’s experiments suggested that rockets
could be made powerful enough to escape Earth’s gravity and travel into
space. By 1916, the cost of Goddard's rocket research had become too
great for his modest teaching salary to bear.
He began to solicit potential sponsors for financial assistance. In January 1917, the Smithsonian Institution
agreed to provide Goddard with a five-year grant totaling $5000 for research
into rockets that could reach the upper atmosphere to release weather recording
devices. Clark University was able to
contribute $3500 and the use of their physics lab to the
project. Worcester Polytechnic Institute
also allowed him to use its abandoned Magnetics Laboratory on the edge of
campus during this time, as a safe place for testing. WPI also made some rocket parts in their
machine shop. Goddard's fellow Clark scientists were
astonished at the unusually large Smithsonian grant for rocket research, which
they thought was not real science.
(Decades later, rocket scientists who knew how much it cost to research
and develop rockets said that Goddard had received little financial support.) In late 1919, at the insistence of
Arthur G. Webster, the world-renowned head of Clark's physics department, the Smithsonian published Goddard's
groundbreaking work, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. The report described Goddard's mathematical
theories of rocket flight, his experiments with solid-fuel rockets, and
the possibilities for exploring Earth's atmosphere and beyond. Included as a thought experiment was
the idea of launching a rocket to the Moon, and igniting a mass of flash powder
on its surface, so as to be visible through a telescope. Note: Showing how far
Goddard was ahead of his time, in a letter to the Smithsonian, dated March
1920, he discussed: photographing the Moon and planets from rocket-powered
fly-by probes, sending messages to distant civilizations on inscribed metal
plates, the use of solar energy in space, and the idea of high-velocity ion
propulsion. In that same letter, Goddard
clearly describes the concept of the ablative heat shield, suggesting the
landing apparatus be covered with "layers of a very infusible hard
substance with layers of a poor heat conductor between" designed to erode
predictably under the extreme heat when reentering the Earth’s atmosphere, as
modern space vehicle heat shields do today, Goddard's 1919 report is now regarded as one of the
pioneering works of the science of rocketry; 1750 copies were distributed
worldwide. Goddard also sent a copy to
individuals who requested one, until his personal supply was exhausted. The publication of Goddard's document gained him national
attention from U.S. newspapers, most of it negative. Although Goddard's discussion of targeting
the Moon was only a small part of the work as a whole (eight lines on the next
to last page of 69 pages), and was intended as an illustration of the
possibilities rather than a declaration of intent, newspapers sensationalized
his ideas to the point of misrepresentation and ridicule. Even the Smithsonian had to abstain from
publicity because of the amount of ridiculous correspondence received from the
general public. Though the unimaginative public
chuckled at the "moon man," his groundbreaking paper was read
seriously by many rocketeers in America, Europe, and Russia, who were stirred
to build their own rockets. Smithsonian aerospace historian
Frank Winter said that this paper was "one of the key catalysts behind the
international rocket movement of the 1920s and 30s.” Note: As is frequently
the case with scientific theory and invention, developments proceeded
in various parts of the world. In
achieving lift-off of his small but sophisticated rocket engine, Goddard
carried his experiments further than did the Russian and German space pioneers
of the day. While Goddard was engaged in
building models of a space-bound vehicle, he was unaware that an obscure
schoolteacher in a remote village of Russia was equally fascinated by the
potential for space flight. In
1903, Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky wrote The Exploration of
Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices, which many years later was
hailed by the Soviet Union as the forerunner of space flight. The other member of the pioneer space trio -
Hermann Oberth of Germany - published his space flight treatise, The
Rocket into Interplanetary Space, in 1923, four years after the appearance
of Goddard’s early monograph. On June 21, 1924, Goddard married Esther Christine Kisk (1901 - 1982), a secretary in Clark University’s
President’s Office. Twenty years younger
than Robert, they nevertheless formed a life-long partnership. Esther
deciphered his notes, which she alone could read, photographed his experiments,
stamped out the brush fires that were the results of his launchings, kept his
account books, sewed the recovery parachutes he used in his launchings, and
never wavered in her support. By the mid-1920s, Goddard realized that it would take more
efficient liquid propellants to reach space, and so he turned
his attention from powdered solid-fueled rockets to liquid-fueled rockets. He was the first to explore mathematically the ratios of
energy and thrust per weight of various fuels, including liquid oxygen and
liquid hydrogen. He was the first
scientist to realize that liquid oxygen was the element essential for
combustion in a rocket. He established
that rockets based on atmospheric oxygen could never fly in space, where the
lack of oxygen would eliminate combustion.
Goddard also discovered that the rate of combustion depends on the
amount of oxygen, and designed and developed a rocket using a combination of
gasoline and liquid oxygen as fuel. On March 16, 1926, the world’s first flight of a
liquid-propelled rocket engine took place on his Aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn,
Massachusetts, achieving a brief lift-off.
It reached a height of 41 feet and averaged a speed of
about 60 miles per hour.  The complete rocket (shown above) was significantly taller
than Goddard, but did not include the pyramidal support structure which he is
grasping. The rocket's combustion chamber is the small cylinder at the
top; the nozzle is visible beneath it. The fuel tank, which is also part of the
rocket, is the larger cylinder opposite Goddard's torso. The fuel tank is directly beneath the nozzle
and is protected from the motor's exhaust by an asbestos cone. Asbestos-wrapped aluminum tubes connected the
motor to the tanks, providing both support and fuel transport. By May, after a series of modifications to
simplify the plumbing, the combustion chamber and nozzle were placed in the now
classic position, at the lower end of the rocket. Goddard received a total of $10,000
from the Smithsonian by 1927, and additional funding was running out. On July 17, 1929, in Auburn, Goddard tested the first rocket
containing atmospheric measurement instruments.
This launch gained the attention of
the newspapers; Charles Lindbergh learned of Goddard’s work in a New
York Times article. Goddard met
the aviator soon after in his office at Clark University. Lindbergh was immediately impressed by Goddard’s
research. Lindbergh discussed finding
additional financing for Goddard's work and lent his famous name to the effort. Lindbergh made several proposals to industry
and private investors for funding, but was unsuccessful due to the U.S. stock
market crash in October 1929. By late 1929, Goddard had been
attracting additional notoriety with each rocket launch. He was finding it increasingly difficult to
conduct his research without unwanted distractions. Goddard was still subjected in the press to the "most
violent attacks." After
one of Goddard's experiments in 1929, a local Worcester newspaper carried the
mocking headline "Moon rocket misses target by 238,7991⁄2 miles.”
Experiments at Roswell, New
Mexico: 1930 - 1941 In the spring of 1930, Charles Lindbergh finally found
financial support in the Guggenheim family. Financier Daniel Guggenheim agreed
to fund Goddard's research over the next four years for a total of $100,000
(~$2.1 million today). The
Guggenheim family, especially Harry Guggenheim, would continue to support
Goddard's work in the years to come. With new financial backing, in the
summer of 1930, Goddard relocated to the open spaces of Roswell, New
Mexico, where he worked in a small shop with a small team of technicians
in near-isolation and relative secrecy for years.  He had consulted a meteorologist as to
the best area to do his work, and Roswell seemed ideal. Here they would not endanger anyone, would not
be bothered by the curious, and would experience a more moderate climate (which
was also better for Goddard's health). Goddard determined early at Roswell that fins alone were not
sufficient to stabilize a rocket in flight and keep it on the desired
trajectory in the face of winds aloft and other disturbing forces. He added movable vanes in the exhaust,
controlled by a gyroscope, to control and steer his rocket. He also introduced the more efficient swiveling
engine in several rockets, basically the method used to steer large
liquid-propellant missiles and launchers today. By September 1931, his rockets had the
now familiar appearance of a smooth casing with tail-fins. He began
experimenting with gyroscopic guidance and made a flight test of such
a system in April 1932. A gyroscope,
mounted on gimbals, electrically controlled steering vanes in the exhaust. A temporary loss of funding from the
Guggenheims, as a result of the depression, forced Goddard in the spring of
1932 to return to his professorial responsibilities at Clark University. He remained at the university until the autumn
of 1934, when Guggenheim funding resumed.  Upon his return to Roswell, Goddard
began work on a series of rockets powered by
gasoline and liquid oxygen, pressurized with nitrogen. In 1935, he achieved rocket flights that
reached a mile in altitude and maximum speeds of 700 miles per hour, the first
to exceed the speed of sound. Goddard
was elated because the guidance system kept the rocket on a vertical path so
well. His work “Liquid Propellant Rocket
Development” was published in 1936. In 1936 - 1939, Goddard began work on
another series rockets, which were much more massive and designed to reach very
high altitude, but ran into troubles trying to find a method to cool the more
powerful rocket engines. After the
larger rockets failed, he returned to a smaller design, and reached an altitude
of 1.7 miles, the highest of any of his rockets. Weight was reduced by using thin-walled fuel
tanks, wound with high-tensile-strength wire. Goddard experimented with many of the
features of today's large rockets, such as multiple combustion chambers and
nozzles. In November 1936, he flew the
world's first rocket with multiple chambers, hoping to increase thrust without
increasing the size of a single chamber.
It had four combustion chambers, reached a height of 200 feet, and
corrected its vertical path using blast vanes until one chamber burned
through. This flight demonstrated that a
rocket with multiple combustion chambers could fly stably and be easily guided. In July 1937, he replaced the guidance vanes
with a movable tail section containing a single combustion chamber on gimbals
(thrust vectoring). The flight was of
low altitude, but a large disturbance, probably caused by a change in the wind
velocity, was corrected back to vertical.
In an August test, the flight path was corrected seven times by the
movable tail and was captured on film by Goddard’s wife Esther. From 1940 to 1941, Goddard worked on
rockets, which used turbopumps to produce a high-pressure propellant flow for
feeding the rocket combustion chamber. The
lightweight pumps produced higher propellant pressures, permitting a more
powerful engine (greater thrust) and a lighter structure (lighter tanks and no
pressurization tank), but two launches both ended in crashes after reaching an
altitude of only a few hundred feet. The turbopumps worked well, however, and
Goddard was pleased.  When Goddard mentioned the need for
turbopumps, Harry Guggenheim suggested that he contact pump manufacturers to
aid him. None were interested, as the
development cost of such miniature pumps was prohibitive. Goddard's team was therefore left on its own
and from September 1938 to June 1940, designed and tested the small turbopumps
and gas generators to operate the turbines. Esther later said that the pump tests were
"the most trying and disheartening phase of the research.” Goddard was able to flight-test many
of his rockets, but some resulted in what the uninitiated would call failures,
usually resulting from engine malfunction or loss of control. Goddard did not consider them failures,
however, because he felt that he always learned something from a test. With World War II starting, from May
to July of 1940, Goddard tried to explain to U.S. Army and Navy officials about
the German threat, and the necessity for the United States to produce its own
long-range missiles. War planners
largely ignored him, thinking that Germany was not capable of launching a
missile across the Atlantic. Note: Before World War
II, there was a lack of vision and serious interest in the United States
concerning the potential of rocketry, especially in Washington D.C. Goddard's liquid-fueled rocket was neglected
by his country, according to aerospace historian Eugene Emme, but was
noticed and advanced by other nations, especially the Germans. Goddard had showed remarkable prescience in
1923 in a letter to the Smithsonian. He
knew that the Germans were very interested in rocketry and said he "would
not be surprised if the research would become something in the nature of a
race," and he wondered how soon the European "theorists" would
begin to build rockets. Wernher
von Braun, a German physicist instituted the German Rocket Society in 1927,
following Goddard’s March 1926 launch.
The German army began research to create a long-range missile using
liquid propellants in 1931. This led
to the world's first large-scale liquid-propellant rocket vehicle, the V-2, the
first modern long-range ballistic missile, successfully launched against Great
Britain beginning in 1942. Final Years and Death: 1942 - 1945 During World War II, from 1942 - 1945,
Goddard served as Director of Research, Navy Dept., Bureau of Aeronautics,
developing jet-assisted takeoff and variable thrust liquid propellant rockets,
at Roswell, New Mexico and Annapolis Maryland. In August 1943, Goddard told President Atwood at Clark
University that he believed he was needed by the navy, was nearing retirement
age, and was unable to lecture because of a throat problem, which did not allow
him to talk above a whisper. He
regretfully resigned as professor of physics. Goddard was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1945. He continued to work until surgery was
required, and he died in Baltimore, Maryland on August 10, 1945, at age 62. He was buried in Hope Cemetery in
his home town of Worcester, Massachusetts. Legacy Following the rocket pioneer's death, his widow, Esther Goddard,
championed his work. Goddard is credited
with 214 patents, of which 131 were filed by Esther after Robert’s death. On September 16, 1959, the 86th Congress
authorized the issuance of a gold medal in the honor of professor Robert H.
Goddard. Esther Goddard was on hand
for the formal dedication of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Maryland on March 16, 1961, 35 years to the day after the professor launched
the first liquid-fueled rocket from his Aunt Effie's farm. Robert H. Goddard High School was
completed in 1965 in Roswell, New Mexico, and dedicated by Esther Goddard. .jpg) In 1966, the Goddard rocket launching
site in Auburn, Massachusetts, became a National Historic Landmark.. In 1969, the Goddard Memorial Library at Clark University was
named in his honor. The Dr. Robert H. Goddard Collection and the Robert
Goddard Exhibition Room are housed in the Archives and Special Collections area
of the library. Goddard influenced many people who
went on to do significant work in the U.S. space program, such
as Robert Truax (USN), Milton Rosen (Naval Research
Laboratory and NASA), astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell,
NASA flight controller Gene Kranz, astrodynamicist (expert in
the study of the motion of objects in space) Samuel Herrick (UCLA), and
General Jimmy Doolittle (U.S. Army and National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics). Impact on Rocketry Robert Goddard avoided sharing details
of his work with other scientists and preferred to work alone with his
technicians. He was concerned with
avoiding the public criticism and ridicule he had faced in the 1920s, which he
believed had harmed his professional reputation. His approach was that
independent development of his ideas without interference would bring quicker
results, even though he received less technical support. Goddard spoke to professional groups,
published articles and papers, and patented his ideas; but while he discussed
basic principles, he was unwilling to reveal the details of his designs until
he had flown rockets to high altitudes and thus proven his theory. He tended to avoid any mention of space
flight, and spoke only of high-altitude research, since he believed that other
scientists regarded the subject as unscientific. (During the First and Second
World Wars, Goddard offered his services, patents, and technology to the
military, but in general was ignored.) Goddard's reluctance to share the
details of his work led to criticism for failure to cooperate with other
scientists and engineers, and perhaps more importantly reduced the impact and
influence of his work on the timely development of rocketry. The German army began research to
create a long-range missile in 1931, and rapidly attained a great deal of
experience with liquid-fuel rockets in their development of the V-2. We now know that Goddard’s 1930s rockets - as
remarkable as they were for being built by one man with a few helpers - were no
match for the German army’s accomplishments.
The creation of the V-2 required hundreds if not thousands of
scientists, engineers, and technicians, representing all kinds of disciplines,
from aerodynamics to materials science and thermodynamics. Nevertheless, in 1963, Wernher von
Braun, reflecting on the history of rocketry, said of Goddard: "His
rockets ... may have been rather crude by present-day standards, but they
blazed the trail and incorporated many features used in our most modern rockets
and space vehicles.” He once recalled
that "Goddard's experiments in liquid fuel saved us years of work, and
enabled us to perfect the V-2 years before it would have been possible." After World War II, von Braun reviewed
Goddard's patents and believed they contained enough technical information to
build a large missile.
Robert
Goddard was the first scientist who not only realized the potentialities of rockets
and space flight but also contributed directly in bringing them to practical
realization. Goddard had a rare talent
in both creative science and practical engineering. The dedicated labors of this modest man went
largely unrecognized in the United States until the dawn of the Space Age. High honors and wide acclaim, belated but
richly deserved, now come to the name of Robert H. Goddard.
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