Earlier this week my 12 year old was working on his Astronomy Lapbook. He came to me asking some question about rockets that was WAY over my head. I replied "I think you need to ask Dr. Goddard that!" He said "Who is Dr. Goddard?" and the following report was born! LOL
Dr. Goddard - The Father of Modern Rocketry
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, on October 5, 1882, Robert Goddard. A 16 year old boy who has been held back twice. He was a boy with frail health and stomach problems. Could this boy be a great man? The answer is yes.
At age 16 he read the book War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. He became interested in space. On October 19, 1899 he was climbing a cherry tree to cut off dead branches. He began to imagine a thing that could blast you to the moon and beyond. Maybe even to MARS! He began working hard, went to college and became smarter and smarter. His first writing on the possibility of a liquid-fueled rocket came in February 1909. He began getting patents on many things, and then wrote a book called A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes in 1919. This gained him attention from newspapers… unfortunately….
"Moon rocket misses target by 238,799 1/2 miles." Was the mocking headline of a U.S. newspaper after one of his experiments in 1929
And before that in 1920 He reached the front page of The New York Times.
"Believes Rocket Can Reach Moon," reported a Smithsonian press release about a "multiple charge high efficiency rocket." The chief application seen was "the possibility of sending recording apparatus to moderate and extreme altitudes within the earth's atmosphere, the new rocket apparatus would go straight up and come straight down." But it also mentioned a proposal "to [send] to the dark part of the new moon a sufficiently large amount of the most brilliant flash powder which, in being ignited on impact, would be plainly visible in a powerful telescope. This would be the only way of proving that the rocket had really left the attraction of the earth as the apparatus would never come back.” (Quotes from wikipedia.org)
The next day the proposal was attacked in the New York Times. "the instruments would return to the point of departure... for parachutes drift just as balloons do. And the rocket, or what was left of it after the last explosion, would need to be aimed with amazing skill, and in a dead calm, to fall on the spot whence it started. But that is a slight inconvenience... though it might be serious enough from the [standpoint] of the always innocent bystander... a few thousand yards from the firing line." But also the writer said "after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its longer journey it will neither be accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. To claim that it would be is to deny a fundamental law of dynamics, and only Dr. Einstein and his chosen dozen, so few and fit, are licensed to do that." It expressed disbelief that Professor Goddard actually "does not know of the relation of action to reaction, and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react" and even talked of "such things as intentional mistakes or oversights." Goddard, the Times declared, apparently suggesting bad faith, "only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." (Quotes from wikipedia.org)
Many years later, after the death of Goddard, on July 17, 1969—the day after the launch of Apollo 11— the New York Times published a short item under the headline "A Correction," summarizing its 1920 editorial mocking Goddard, and concluding: "Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error."(Quotes from wikipedia.org) This “correction” came 49 years after the original article was published.
Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926 in Auburn Massachusetts.
It was called Nell.
But then newspapers drew the attention of a mister Lindbergh. But not the bad kind. Instead Lindbergh gave Goddard $100,000… which he gave just after the U.S. stock market crash in October 1929.
With new money Goddard moved to… Roswell New Mexico! Yes the UFO place! But this was long before UFOs were thought to be there. Though he brought his work in rocketry to the attention of the United States Army, he was rebuffed, as the Army largely failed to grasp the military application of rockets.
Ironically, it was Nazi Germany that took the most interest in his research. They even applied his methods to the V-2 rockets!
He learned he had throat cancer in 1945, and died that year on August 10, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was buried in Hope Cemetery in his hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts.
He was born on October 5, 1882
He wrote a book in 1919
He was mocked in 1920-1929
He was funded and moved to Roswell 1930
He died on August 10th 1945
He was formally apologized to after his death on July 17, 1969
"Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it; once realized, it becomes commonplace." ~ Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard
In case you are wondering why I was so smart and knew who Dr. Goddard was...It is because we have visited the Kansas Cosmosphere in years gone by and they have a wonderful exhibit called Dr. Goddards Lab. It is a show that takes place in a reproduction of his original lab and is complete with explosions and of course rockets! Apparently it was long enough ago that we went there that my 12 year old doesn't remember it. This is just another example of why I love homeschooling! While he was excited about the topic he could drop the other things he was doing and investigate a topic he found very interesting!
We have homeschooled our children from the start and we love every minute of it! This is my place to share my thoughts on homeschooling, my kids and living for the Lord. All the while being a little outside the box!!
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