Robert Goddard

Robert Goddard (1882-1945), American rocket engineer. Robert Hutchings Goddard was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and educated at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Clark University. From 1909 to 1943 Goddard taught physics at various institutions, including Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Princeton and Clark universities. His interest in rocketry began in childhood, and in 1919 he published a short book, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, proposing a rocket that might reach the moon. In 1923 he tested the first rocket engines to utilize liquid fuel; previously only solid fuels had been used. In 1926 he launched the first liquid-fuel rocket, using a mixture of gasoline and liquid oxygen. In 1929 he sent up the first instrument-carrying rocket, which bore a barometer, a thermometer, and a small camera. From 1930 to 1942, with the aid of a Guggenheim Foundation grant, he worked in New Mexico. His experiments included the construction of rockets that reached a velocity of 885 km/h (550 mph) and heights of up to 2 km (1.5 mi); and he accumulated more than 200 patents related to rocketry. During World War II (1939-1945) for two years he was director of research for the Bureau of Aeronautics of the U.S. Department of the Navy, and for the last two years of his life he served as a consulting engineer for the Curtiss-Wright Corp., aircraft manufacturers.

Goddard’s work was virtually ignored in his own country during his lifetime. His rocket designs shared many similarities with the weaponry developed by German rocket engineers during the 1930s and World War II. This caused many people to believe that the Germans had obtained and used copies of Goddard’s work in their development of the V-2 rocket. However, Goddard’s secrecy had prevented the Germans from learning much about his work, and the similarity of design was mostly coincidence. It was not until after the war that Goddard’s work was publicized and subsequently became the foundation for later space exploration. See also Rocket; Space Exploration.