Electronics 1914: it is rocket science

Robert Goddard

Meet the original rocket man.

In 1914, the patents Robert Goddard had filed for a multi-stage and liquid-fuelled rocket were registered. Even before the Great War had broken out, this American physicist had inadvertently launched the space race.

Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1882, Goddard had grown up fascinated by the mechanics of flight. Inspired by Isaac Newton and War of the Worlds, he experienced an epiphany while climbing a cherry tree in his father's backyard. "I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet."

As an undergraduate he had written papers exploring various aspects of flight technology, such as gyro-stabilisation and rocket efficiency. By 1913 Goddard was a research fellow at Princeton University. He had already developed a calculus-based theory to calculate a rocket's position and velocity in vertical flight, and was planning a sounding rocket with which to explore the atmosphere and provide data to aid future research.

It was while recovering from a serious bout of tuberculosis that Goddard wrote his revolutionary patent applications. 

Goddard's original patent application

In the next few years his research and testing continued, and focused particularly on thrust efficiency - the conversion of fuel into thrust which would hold the key to any successful space-bound rocket. A 1915 static test achieved thrust efficiency of 63% and exhaust velocities of over 7000 feet (2134 metres) - enough to convince the Smithsonian Institution and Clark University to sponsor Goddard's research.

 

Although the military showed an interest in Goddard's work, he remained sceptical and rocketry had no involvement in the technology used in the Great War. Goddard's groundbreaking book, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, was published in 1919. He was ridiculed by the press in these early years, but after relentless testing and implementation of his technology, it was Goddard, posthumously, who was vindicated.  

The New York Times was forced to issue an apology in July 1969, as Apollo 11 was making its way to the Moon:

"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."