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Contraption maker rocket science8/5/2023 ![]() Retired National Air and Space Museum curator Frank Winter has shown the global impact of A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. He inspired others, however, to believe that space travel would happen if rocketry was developed. His real importance did not turn out to be inventing liquid-propellant rocketry, although no one can take his first away. Goddard went to his deathbed convinced that the Nazis had stolen their technology from him. It was the Germans who made the breakthrough to large-scale rocketry with the V-2. In fact, Goddard’s liquid-propellant rocket work turned out to be close to a dead-end because he was reluctant to share it with anyone. Yet, as impressive as some of his work in Roswell was, he continued to resist the entreaties of his funders to seek help when his promises to reach the upper atmosphere never materialized. When the Smithsonian, Lindbergh, and Harry Guggenheim pushed Goddard into publishing another report in 1936, he finally revealed the 1926 launch. The Clark University professor spent most of the 1930s in Roswell, New Mexico, building and launching much larger rockets. In 1930, Goddard received greater funding when famed aviator Charles Lindbergh intervened with the Guggenheim foundation. His paranoia only increased after the German space enthusiasts became active in the 1920s. He was afraid others might steal his inventions, as he was convinced he was the first person in the world to imagine how to make spaceflight feasible. Afterward he was not reluctant thereafter to talk to the press in general terms, but he remained secretive about his technical experiments. Volunteers wrote to Goddard asking to join the crew of his imminent lunar voyage. But the press flap also produced a lot of sensationalism. The story spread quickly around the world-a scientist had legitimized the idea that Moon travel might even be possible. A Smithsonian press release, long lost, noted his proposal to hit the night side of the Moon with a rocket carrying flash powder. In January 1920, the Institution had inadvertently made Goddard world-famous when it published his short, often mathematical treatise, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. ![]() ![]() The Smithsonian had funded Goddard since 1917, in the hope that his rocket could lift instruments above the atmosphere-the observatory’s main program was measuring solar variability and output. Abbot, the director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (and the institution’s Secretary after 1928). He told only a few people and, after a couple of weeks, Charles G. This event did not even make the local newspapers indeed the reticent professor kept it secret for a decade. Image: Dane Penland, National Air and Space Museum, NASM2016-00615 This rocket borrows parts from his March 1926 rocket and will be on display this spring in our Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall. Goddard's liquid-fuel rocket from May 1926. ![]()
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