On 9/1/2010 5:30 AM, wrote:
On Aug 31, 1:40 pm, Pat wrote:
Looks a bit like a Apollo CSM; looks even more like a flying dildo
:http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2010/...g-to-the-moon/
I imagine that unfortunate resemblance was one of the things that turned
Goddard off on the press.

Did the average person know what a dildo looked like, in 1930? How
old are dildos in the public arena? (The great thing about human
history is how things connect.)

Clean back to the stone age:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dildo#History



I had serious doubts that he ever built a rocket that reached a speed of
8,000 feet per second, so I checked up on that...the _exhaust velocity_
was 8,000 FPS.

David Clary's biography of Goddard ("Rocket Man") doesn't seem to
report exhaust velocity of any of Goddard's rockets.


It was from a statement Goddard sent to the Smithsonian in 1916
regarding his work on solid-fueled rockets:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_..._sponsors hip



I'm always fascinated by this era's approach to cockpit design. My
guess is that the artist was using as a model the Army's balloon
experiments.

The big prop spaceship that was originally built for the 1930 musical
comedy "Just Imagine" that later showed up in the Flash Gordon serials
probably inspired a lot of copies as to its cockpit layout:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/OUbGkSfaKrs/0.jpg
The cockpit on SpaceShipOne looked like something straight out of a
1930's sci-fi movie, and you almost expect to see the breech of the nose
heat ray sticking into the cabin from its front point:
http://gizmodo.com/5141708/photo-of-...-slick-cockpit

Pat