He was the first human being...

I n a l t . a n a g r a m s ,
Ragmo wrote:

Neil Armstrong once bathed in sweet fame.
Oh! And Houston staff shout!
=
He was the first human being to set foot
and land on the moon's surface!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert H. Goddard (Oct 5, 1882 - Aug 10, 1945),
U.S. professor and scientist, was a pioneer of con-
trolled, liquid-fueled rocketry. He launched the world's
first liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926. From
1930 to 1935 he launched rockets that attained
speeds of up to 550 miles an hour. THOUGH HIS
WORK IN THE FIELD WAS REVOLUTIONARY,
HE WAS OFTEN RIDICULED FOR HIS THEORIES.
HE RECEIVED LITTLE RECOGNITION DURING
HIS OWN LIFETIME, BUT WOULD EVENTUALLY
COME TO BE CALLED ONE OF THE "FATHERS
OF MODERN ROCKETRY" FOR HIS LIFE'S
WORK. [...]

First patents

In the decades around 1900, radio was a new tech-
nology, a fertile field for exploration and innovation.
In 1911, while working at Clark University in
Worcester, Mass., Goddard investigated the effects
of radio waves on insulators. In order to generate
radio-frequency power, he invented a vacuum tube
that operated like a cathode-ray tube. U.S. patent
no. 1,159,209 was issued on November 2, 1915.
THIS WAS THE FIRST USE OF A VACUUM
TUBE TO AMPLIFY A SIGNAL, PRECEDING
EVEN LEE DE FOREST'S CLAIM. I T T H U S
M A R K E D T H E B E G I N N I N G O F
T H E E L E C T R O N I C A G E .

In early 1913, Goddard became seriously ill with
tuberculosis, and he was forced to leave his
position at Princeton. He returned to Worcester,
where he began a prolonged process of recovery.

It was during this recuperative period that Goddard
began to produce his most important work. In 1914,
his first two landmark patents were accepted and
registered with the U.S. Patent Office. The first,
Patent No. 1,102,653, issued July 7, 1914,
described a multi-stage rocket. The second,
Patent No. 1,103,503, issued July 14, 1914,
described a rocket fueled with gasoline and liquid
nitrous oxide. The two patents would become
important milestones in the history of rocketry.

Goddard's critical breakthrough in rocketry was to
use as a rocket engine the steam turbine nozzle
that had been invented by the Swedish inventor
Carl Gustaf Patrik de Laval (1845-1913). The de
Laval nozzle allows the most efficient ("isentropic")
conversion of the energy of hot gases into forward
motion. By means of this nozzle, Goddard
increased the efficiency of his rocket engines from
2 percent to 64 percent. This greatly reduced the
amount of rocket fuel required to lift a given mass
and thus made interplanetary travel practical.

Mid to late 1910s

In the fall of 1914, Goddard's health had improved
enough for him to accept a part-time teaching
position at Clark University. By 1916, the cost of
his rocket research was becoming too much for
his modest teaching salary to bear. He began to
solicit financial assistance from outside sponsors,
beginning with the Smithsonian Institution, which
agreed to a five-year grant totaling $5,000.

Not all of Goddard's early work was geared towards
space travel. He developed the basic idea of the
bazooka and, using a music rack for a launcher,
demonstrated the weapon at Aberdeen Proving
Ground two days before the Armistice that ended
World War I. Another Clark University researcher
continued Goddard's work on the bazooka,
leading to the weapon used in World War II.

A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes

In 1919, the Smithsonian Institution published
Goddard's groundbreaking work, A Method of
Reaching Extreme Altitudes. The book describes
Goddard's mathematical theories of rocket flight,
his research in solid-fuel and liquid-fuel rockets,
and the possibilities he saw of exploring the earth
and beyond. Along with Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's
earlier work, The Exploration of Cosmic Space
by Means of Reaction Devices (1903), Goddard's
book is regarded as one of the pioneering works
of the science of rocketry, and is believed to have
influenced the work of German pioneers Hermann
Oberth and Wernher von Braun.

N e w Y o r k T i m e s c r i t i c i s m

The publication of Goddard's document gained him
national attention from U.S. newspapers.
ALTHOUGH THE BOOK MAKES NO OUT-
LANDISH BOASTS OF TARGETING THE MOON
OR THE PLANETS, THE PAPERS SENSATION-
ALIZED GODDARD'S IDEAS TO THE POINT
OF MISREPRESENTATION.

As a result of this, Goddard became increasingly
suspicious of others and often worked alone, which
limited the ripple effect from his work. His unsocia-
bility was a result of the harsh criticism that he re-
ceived from the media and from other scientists,
who doubted the viability of rocket travel in space.
After one of his experiments in 1929, a local Wor-
cester newspaper carried the mocking headline
"M o o n r o c k e t m i s s e s t a r g e t
b y 2 3 8 , 7 9 9 1 / 2 m i l e s . "

On January 12, 1920 a front-page story in 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 advan-
tage over balloon-carried instruments being ease
of recovery since "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 tele-
scope. 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."

THE NEXT DAY, AN UNSIGNED NY TIMES
EDITORIAL DELIGHTED IN HEAPING SCORN
ON THE PROPOSAL. The editorial writer attacked
the instrumentation application by questioning
whether "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 inconven-
ience... though it might be serious enough from the
[standpoint] of the always innocent bystander...
a few thousand yards from the firing line."

THE FULL WEIGHT OF SCORN, HOWEVER,
WAS RESERVED FOR THE LUNAR PROPOSAL:
"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."

O N J U L Y 1 7 , 1 9 6 9 - - T H E D A Y
A F T E R T H E L A U N C H O F
A P O L L O 1 1 - - T H E N E W Y O R K
T I M E S P U B L I S H E D A S H O R T
I T E M U N D E R T H E H E A D L I N E
" A C O R R E C T I O N , " S U M M A R -
I Z I N G I T S 1 9 2 0 E D I T O R I A L
M O C K I N G G O D D A R D , A N D
C O N C L U D I N G : " F U R T H E R
I N V E S T I G A T I O N A N D
E X P E R I M E N T A T I O N H A V E
C O N F I R M E D T H E F I N D I N G S
O F I S A A C N E W T O N I N T H E
1 7 T H C E N T U R Y & I T I S N O W
D E F I N I T E L Y E S T A B L I S H E D
T H A T A R O C K E T C A N
F U N C T I O N I N A V A C U U M
A S W E L L A S I N A N
A T M O S P H E R E . T H E T I M E S
R E G R E T S T H E E R R O R . "
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