Dr. Robert H. Goddard, American Rocketry Pioneer

The Greatest Genius of the Space Age: Dr. Robert Goddard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2t7ntuOziA

Images
1. Colorized image of Dr. Goddard at a Clark University chalkboard in 1924.
2. Robert Hutchings Goddard with Rocket
3. Dr Goddard and colleagues holding the rocket used in flight of April 18, 1932 L-to-r L Mansur, A. Kisk, C Mansur, Dr. R H Goddard and N.L. Junquist
4. The Goddards at home Dr. Robert H Goddard and Esther Christine Goddard [nee Kisk] (Tydings-on-the-Bay, Maryland, 1943)

Background from {[ http://www.chris-winter.com/RHGoddard/RHG_P01.html]}
To Open The Sky
The Front Pages of Christopher P. Winter
An historical essay on the life and work of
Robert Hutchings Goddard
The Father of American Rocketry

Part 1: The Cherry-Tree Dream
Robert Goddard was one such visionary. He was born in the industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts on October 5th of 1882, the ninth generation of a family notable for its achievements. His father was said to have Yankee ingenuity with machinery and tools. The elder Goddard moved the family to Boston during his son's infancy to take up half-ownership of a machine-tools shop. Here Goddard spent his youth, an only child in a home with an invalid mother suffering from tuberculosis. He himself was often sickly, and his schooling was seriously impeded as a result.
Robert was seventeen when the family returned to Worcester. He had then completed only the freshman year of high school, demonstrating mediocre scholarship and a pronounced distaste for mathematics. Illness kept him out of school entirely that autumn of 1899. But his mind was not idle. His father had given him a subscription to Scientific American, which he devoured avidly each month. He made good use of the local library, reading books on science as well as science fiction — most notably H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, a novel he revisited often in later years.
He was allowed some outdoor chores, and on the nineteenth day of October he clambered up into an old cherry tree in the orchard to prune some dead limbs. It was a fine day, and as he gazed over the country a vision came to him that was to determine the whole course of his life. He recorded the event in his diary:
"As I looked toward the fields in the east 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 . . . It seemed to me that a weight whirling around a horizontal shaft, moving more rapidly above than below, could furnish lift by virtue of the greater centrifugal force at the top of the path. I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended, for existence at last seemed very purposive." [1]
The linear-force-from-eccentric-rotation idea has surfaced again and again, perhaps most recently in the form of the Dean Drive. Alas, it is pure fantasy. But though Goddard never talked much about this daydream of his 17th autumn, it is clear he was not deluded for long. His arboreal inspiration led him to a life of experimentation that was dedicated to producing results. While he abandoned that original method as useless, the dream of soaring into space never left him, and throughout his life he quietly celebrated its birth each October 19th.
In order to realize that dream, he knew, he had to complete his education — and that meant mathematics. It was two full years before he was well enough to continue. He entered South High School in Worcester as a sophomore. He was determined to "shine" in mathematics and physics, but it was still a struggle. Sources variously credit Calvin C. Andrews and a Miss Hill, teachers of physics and math respectively, as helping him "over the hump" in his studies. He graduated in 1904 with high scholastic honors, the oldest student ever to receive a diploma from South High. His commencement address, On Taking Things for Granted, closed with these words:
"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today, and the reality of tomorrow."
Things did not improve immediately for Robert Goddard. His mother needed constant care, which was a significant drain on the family's time and money. However, he had a remarkable grandmother who saw to it that a scholarship and other financial help enabled him to attend Worcester Polytechnic Institute. There, he continued his record of excellent scholarship, with Professor A. Wilmer Duff providing the inspiration in physics.
Despite his brilliance and a rather tall, gangly appearance, Goddard was no bookworm (or "nerd", as we say today.) Sociable and witty, he took part in many activities including the tutoring of backward students in mathematics. In his senior year, he was elected class president and served as editor-in-chief of the college yearbook. With a degree from WPI in hand, he entered doctoral studies at Clark University, also in Worcester, while teaching at the Institute.
During this time he also began small-scale experiments with rockets, developing his ideas for multi-stage rockets which would use hydrogen and oxygen as propellants to reach space. He earned his Ph.D. from Clark in 1911, put in another year of study there, then moved to Princeton University's Palmer Physical Laboratory on a research fellowship. While completing his assigned work there — an esoteric project involving measurement of forces in a dielectric carrying displacement current — he spent many long nights working until dawn to master the mathematical basis of multi-stage flight.
This exhausting schedule took a toll on his health. By the spring of 1913 he was forced to consult a physician. The diagnosis: tuberculosis was far advanced. He was told he had two weeks to live.
Bed rest was prescribed, with a strict order to limit his workload. It was touch and go for quite a while, but eventually his health began to return. Nurses would find papers covered with equations and notes beneath his pillow. But Goddard was careful not to overdo it. He knew — and said — that he could not die with his work unfinished.
Progress continued. In October of 1913 he applied for his first patent on rocket propulsion. A second application came in May 1914. Goddard resumed part-time work on the physics faculty at Clark University in the fall of 1914. By that time, his first two patents had issued. They antedate all other patents in the field of rocketry. Goddard's portfolio of patents ultimately reached 214. The last was granted eleven years after his death.
Steadily improving health permitted Goddard to scale up his experiments. He was working at this time with solid-fuel rockets, because his funds were quite limited. But it was the liquid-fueled variety for which he held high hopes, as a result of his earlier theoretical analysis. What was needed was venture capital. He wrote a detailed memorandum describing his theories, giving it the sober title "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes," and sent copies to several scientific institutions in the hope of attracting some funding.
Today this paper is recognized as one of the foundation documents of astronautics. In 1916, however, it was passed over lightly by most of the institutions that reviewed it. But not, fortunately, by the Smithsonian. Assistant Secretary Dr. Charles Abbot, an astrophysicist, carefully checked Goddard's mathematics and recommended approval. An expert at the National Bureau of Standards concurred. A letter was sent to Goddard asking how much he thought his rocket would cost to develop. His estimate was $10,000, but he modestly asked for only half that much. This lower sum was granted, and a check for $1,000 was quickly supplied, allowing development of a prototype to get under way. In all, the Smithsonian contributed $12,500 to Goddard's efforts. They contributed in other ways, too. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, they advised the Army Signal Corps to enlist Dr. Goddard's help in producing rockets useful in battle. The Army listened; such weapons were built, and a demonstration at Aberdeen Proving Grounds on 10 November 1918 impressed the brass. But the Armistice was signed a few days later, putting an end to any talk of production. Goddard's military work was forgotten for twenty years, to be revived at the onset of World War II and turned into the bazooka.
First Liquid-fuel Rocket Flight
Goddard returned to Clark in 1918 and was promoted to a full professorship in the physics department. He resumed his experiments in Worcester. Solid-fuel chemistry was primitive then; the only real choice was smokeless powder. Goddard made improvements that greatly increased the efficiency of his motors; but this got him no closer to a working multi-stage design. For a number of years he concentrated on perfecting a mechanism to inject powder cartridges into the firing chamber; but this proved too complicated and prone to failure. By 1923 [2] his machinists were fabricating components for miniature liquid-fuel motors. This was proof-of-principle work; the devices were too tiny to be worth flying. The first bench test of a larger motor happened on 6 December 1925. A steel framework to support this motor was built, and on 17 March 1926 came the historic first flight of a liquid-fuel rocket when this ungainly assemblage lifted itself 41 feet at Pakachoag Hill near Auburn, Massachusetts.
This period in Goddard's life is also noteworthy for the scorn heaped upon his head by ignorant writers for newspapers and magazines. It began this way: Clark University's physics department was headed at that time by a Dr. Webster, a man of strong opinions. He had earlier questioned the worth of Goddard's rocket work. But now he demanded more publication of results. When the secretive inventor demurred, Webster threatened to handle the matter himself. Choosing the less objectionable course, Goddard asked the Smithsonian to publish his "Extreme Altitudes" paper. They did so late in 1919, and this brought a spate of derisive opinion pieces. Perhaps the most notorious example is the New York Times editorial of 13 January 1920. Goddard first tried to explain his work to these nay-sayers, but never got through; he ultimately learned to ignore such baseless attacks.
Publication brought notice from other countries as well. But this notice was of an altogether different character — admiring rather than deriding. Nevertheless, Goddard seldom offered any information. It was not long before battles over priority began.
Goddard a Public Menace
Dr. Abbot, now Secretary of the Smithsonian, pushed Goddard for higher altitudes in his experiments. Meanwhile, the good citizens of Worcester began to object to Goddard's increasingly noisy flight tests. After a test on 17 July 1926, someone thought an airplane had crashed. Police cars and an ambulance rushed to the test site, accompanied by a couple of reporters — to find nothing amiss. But Goddard and his crew were still there salvaging valuable, hand-tooled pieces of the crashed rocket. Questions flew. The professor explained as best he could. Predictably, the local press had a field day with the story. Just as predictably, unwanted sightseers began to show up for every test. It was not long before the state Fire Marshall ordered Goddard to remove his rocket activities from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Dr. Goddard sought a new location out of state jurisdiction, and by 1929 had moved to an abandoned artillery range on Camp Devens, a federal property. At the end of a bumpy dirt road, about 25 miles from Worcester, he set up his tower again by a stagnant pool called Hell Pond. This secluded site was fine for static tests; but flight vehicles could not stand the rough trip, and the travel times prevented accomplishing a test in one day, as Goddard's teaching load required. Also, his Smithsonian funds were nearly gone.
Clearly, further progress depended on three things: more funding; freedom from other duties; and plenty of room for rocket flights. Funding had to come first.
On a dreary afternoon in November 1929, having ended his last class for the day, Goddard sat at his desk planning the following day's run at Camp Devens. He received an unanticipated phone call. At home, he mentioned it to his wife:
"Esther," Goddard began, unfolding his napkin at supper that evening, "I had an interesting call from Charles Lindbergh."
"Of course, Bob," his wife replied airily. "And I had tea with Marie, the Queen of Rumania." [3]
"Lucky Lindy" was then at the peak of fame for his solo flight across the Atlantic, and eager to foster new achievements. Aware that propellers were pointless in space, Lindbergh had asked experts at M.I.T. to tell him who in America knew most about rockets. The answer led him to the headquarters of E. I. Du Pont de Nemours in Wilmington, Delaware. There, all doors were open to him — but the minds he met were not. DuPont's experts regarded the extreme heat and huge fuel consumption of rocket engines as insoluble problems. A few weeks later, news of Dr. Goddard's July 1929 difficulties reached him through a story in the New York Times. After meeting the inventor, he determined to help arrange financial support if possible.
Lindbergh brought Goddard to Wilmington to visit Henry Du Pont and his staff. The DuPont engineers questioned their guest closely about methods, and began to take notes. Goddard, immediately suspicious, clammed up.
Lindbergh's next attempt was to arrange a conference with the Advisory Committee of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC. This was held December 10, 1929 at the home of Dr. John C. Merriam, the Carnegie president. Facing a group of distinguished scientists including the Smithsonian's Abbot, Dr. Goddard felt at ease and met respect for his ideas. When the discussion turned to money, Goddard estimated a need for $100,000 over four years. Others felt that reaching high altitudes called for even more massive expenditures. Merriam offered to recommend a grant of $5,000 and asked how Goddard would like it disbursed. The professor replied, "$500 at a time, and when that's used up, I'll send you the vouchers." [4] Recognizing Goddard's thrifty, incremental style, Merriam felt he might do more with the $5,000 than others expected. This funding was eventually granted, and it helped Goddard set up shop in the wide-open spaces of the West.
A financier, Lindbergh realized, was the only real hope for funding of the amounts required. Before his transatlantic crossing, the aviator had met Harry Guggenheim, formerly a Navy flyer in World War I. Guggenheim interested his father, philanthropist Daniel Guggenheim, in supporting aviation, and the elder Guggenheim created the Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics. Lindbergh was influential in persuading him to give Goddard a generous two-year grant of $50,000 beginning in July 1930, after Goddard's Smithsonian funds ran out in the spring.
From Hell Pond to Eden Valley
The next step was choosing a location. Goddard consulted a meteorologist at Clark. He suggested the plateau of southeastern New Mexico. It was warm, high, dry and sparsely populated. In addition to facilitating rocket testing, these conditions were ideal for those suffering from respiratory problems. On a visit in August 1930, Goddard found Mescalero Ranch, a vacant homestead owned by Effie Olds of the family that had produced the Oldsmobile car. He promptly leased this property three miles from Roswell, a bustling cattle town of some 11,000 souls served by daily runs on the Santa Fe rail line. A further search turned up Oscar White, who offered Eden Valley, an area of about 16,000 acres, for Goddard's launch operations. Asked about rent, the rancher waved the question away. All Goddard had to do, he said, was to follow the "law of the range:" Leave any gates you come to as you found them.
Back in Worcester, Goddard made ready for the move. He had shut down the Camp Devens work, thus preserving most of the $5,000 Carnegie Institution grant. This money went into building and equipping the machine shop at Mescalero Ranch. To a man, his crew had already agreed to join him there. The 60-foot launch tower was packed up and shipped west, along with much equipment from the physics lab at Clark University. President Atwood granted him an extended leave of absence, and Goddard was on his way.
NOTES:
[1] — Yost, p. 145
[2] — I have some doubt about the date for the first, small L-F motors.
[3] — Lehman, p. 159
[4] — Lehman, p. 165
If a prescient newspaperman had reported on Goddard's arrival in Roswell, he might have headlined the story much like this: Silence broken at Mescalero Ranch
New science being assembled
Please stand by for a few more years, rocket man says
Part 2: Of a Storm upon the Staked Plain
At Roswell, construction moved swiftly with his crew helping the local contractors. Living quarters for the crew went up behind the main house, a roomy stucco residence. The machine shop came next, and received the equipment on loan from Clark: milling machines, lathes, drill presses, bending brakes and a host of hand tools. New Mexico was later to boast that it was "the finest machine shop in all the southwest." [1]
Not everything went as smoothly. There was the matter of accident and liability insurance. When he applied for this, Goddard had to supply increasingly detailed descriptions of the anticipated work. Although he assured the underwriters (not identified) that this was no more dangerous than what went on in most any university research laboratory, they declined to cover him.
It went no better when the professor sought life insurance for himself. A company doctor examined him and declared, "He ought to be in bed in Switzlerland."
Nothing daunted, Dr. Goddard plunged into his rocket research with renewed enthusiasm. The first static test took place on 29 October 1930. By December 30th of that year, a Goddard rocket had reached a height of 2,000 feet and a top speed of 500 mph. [2, 3]
As always, he was careful to document his results. Seeking dependable legal services in Roswell, Dr. Goddard found Herman Crile who, it turned out, was his neighbor. The inventor wanted his papers notarized without being read, and Crile assented to this. In February 1931, Goddard travelled east to deliver a progress report to his sponsors. There was genuine progress to report, but they were still hoping for more spectacular achievements. Dr. Merriam again voiced his concern about Goddard working in isolation. As usual, the issue was tabled.
The key to higher altitudes was more thrust. Dr. Goddard knew that this meant larger combustion chambers and higher rates of fuel consumption. He began building bigger motors after he returned from Washington. But with bigger engines came bigger problems. One of the toughest was getting that greater fuel flow. Pumps seemed the best method. But nowhere in the world was there a pump that could handle liquid oxygen at the rates and pressures required. Unable to devise a reliable pump himself, Goddard fell back on the heavier system of pressurizing the fuel and oxidizer tanks with nitrogen gas. This was no piece of cake either; it needed a regulator that could hold the pressure high enough for adequate fuel flow, but not too high for the tanks to withstand. By September 1931 he was ready to proof-test a pressurization system on his existing rocket. On first flight, it lifted 200 feet — then lost thrust, fell back and exploded. The gasoline tank had burst.
Such was Goddard's life in those first two years at Roswell: Amid many failures, gradual improvements took place. He had set himself a formidable task: developing a vehicle whose reliable operation required literally dozens of devices that had never existed before. Dr. Goddard was, in fact, perfecting an entirely new branch of transportation technology.
He redesigned the pressure regulator and tried again. Two flights in October reached a height of around 1,700 feet. With that device performing more reliably, he turned his attention to gyroscopic stabilizers. In April of 1932, he began to achieve some success in this area.
But then the outside world intruded. That was the spring when Col. Lindbergh's son was kidnapped and killed, devastating the aviator and his wife. Also, the Great Depression was beginning. Factories shut down in the east, their workers winding up on soup lines; soon even rich men had trouble finding ready cash. In the midwest, severe droughts brought the first of the Dust Bowl years.
Daniel Guggenheim had died in 1930. Harry had already proved himself a capable businessman. But Daniel's network of business relationships had died with him; no son, however capable, can step immediately into the shoes his father left. More importantly, the stock market crash had badly shrunk the Guggenheim Foundation's assets. When Goddard travelled to Washington in May of 1932, he was informed that the Foundation had been forced to suspend its grants. His remaining two years of funding would not be available.
Back at Roswell, Goddard gave his men the bad news. Equipment was crated and stored. Various rocket parts were hammered out of shape and buried in a trench. The shop was swept out and boarded up. The crew dispersed, and Goddard returned to Worcester. In the fall, he took up his teaching duties at Clark again. He did not celebrate his fiftieth birthday, which came in October of that year. But his diary entry for the 19th records the traditional observation for that day: "Anniversary Day . . . Went to Cherry Tree." [4]
Goddard was able to build and test some pump hardware while at Clark. But for the most part his progress in rocketry during these two years in Worcester was on an intellectual plane. He filled notebooks with ideas for igniters and other devices, and kept his Worcester attorney Charles Hawley busy with affadavits for patent applications. By the end of 1934, he had secured 26 patents. [5] There was also time to review past victories and reflect on future plans.
In the wider world, this was the time when Germany pulled ahead of America in astronautics. The German military had disbanded the Verein für Raumschiffahrt and secretly taken over its activities. Lindbergh and Abbot prevailed upon Goddard to offer his services to the Army and Navy once again; but they were still not interested in supporting his work. One bright spot was Lambertsville, New Jersey, where the fledgling American Rocket Society was flying small liquid-fuel rockets. They still sought Goddard's active involvement, and he was still unwilling.
Lindbergh once again became Goddard's champion. In the fall of 1933, he broke loose a $2,500 grant from the newly created Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation. And in 1934, Harry Guggenheim was ready to take up where his father had left off. The Foundation renewed its full grant to Goddard in August of that year. But this time, there were strings attached. It was made clear that further support depended on visible progress. At the Smithsonian, Dr. Abbot took the same position. [6]
The old doctor will take care of that
As they had done four years before, Robert and Esther Goddard piled into their 1930 red Packard coupé for the trip west. They stopped off in Chicago to see the Century of Progress exhibition. There they took in a reenactment of the science-fiction comic strip "Buck Rogers." Esther was impressed by the character of Dr. Huer. As she wrote to her parents:
"He wore a smooth cap of some sort to make him as bald as he looked in the funnies. He walked and talked like Groucho Marx and whenever Buck and his companions got into difficulties, he would say, `Now don't you worry, the old doctor will take care of that!'" [7]
Mescalero Ranch had suffered some in their absence. Persons unknown had stripped the launch tower up to the twenty-foot level. Crows had taken up residence in its upper reaches, weaving nests from bits of wire left by the human scavengers. But the buildings were intact, if a mite dusty. Most of the old crew returned and the site was up and running again in fairly short order.
Shortly after the Goddards' arrival, Roswell was all abuzz about the famous visitors. Lucky Lindy was in town! The Colonel and his wife Anne had flown in on their way to the west coast. They paid a call at Mescalero Ranch and Goddard gave Lindbergh the cook's tour. The visit buoyed both the Goddards, as it had the town. But it was also a reminder of the desire, in certain quarters, for newsworthy achievements.
This was the start of what proved to be the most productive period in Goddard's rocketry development work. He conducted several series of tests, beginning with his "A series," which demonstrated a successful gyroscopic stabilizer. These tests began in September 1934 and lasted through October 1935. The rockets were now bigger, up to 15 feet in length — a beneficial result of the gap in testing. On 31 May 1935, a flight of the A series reached a record height of 7,500 feet. Subsequent series demonstrated larger motors, different fuel combinations, and continual improvements in recovery parachute systems. Concurrently, stabilizers and pressure regulators also underwent gradual improvement. One question in my mind is whether Goddard would have been better advised to stick with and perfect one component before trying to improve the next. I doubt I will ever answer that question.
At right: A four-chamber rocket ready for launch (1936)
The triumphs Goddard achieved during this period were not the spectacular kind his sponsors awaited. Indeed, the flights they witnessed on their visits were quite often spectacular failures. However, they understood that real progress was being made, and continued to support the work into 1941. At that time, the pressures of war put a permanent end to Goddard's work at Mescalero Ranch. The results of that work are visible today at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. In order to assuage Dr. Abbot's desire for an exhibit, Goddard carefully crated an A-series model and shipped it to the Smithsonian. "Nellie" (the team called all their rockets Nell or Nellie) departed the Roswell rail station on 2 November 1935. Such was Dr. Goddard's desire for secrecy that he had the device, still in its shipping crate, sealed up behind a wall in the Smithsonian. There it remained until after his death.
Dr. Charles F. Brooks was the meteorologist who helped locate Goddard's New Mexico site. He and Goddard had kept up their friendship. Now Brooks and Lindbergh persuaded Goddard to unbend enough to address the American Association for the Advancement of Science convention in St. Louis on 31 December 1935. After giving his talk, Progress on the Atmospheric Sounding Rocket, Goddard remarked to his wife, "You know, Esther, they seem to admire what I'm doing!" [8]
Lindbergh also persuaded Goddard to prepare a monograph on his progress. This report, Liquid Propellant Rocket Development, was published by the Smithsonian on 16 March 1936. Although it omitted certain details, it was a reasonably comprehensive summary of his progress since 1919.
To this point, I have no doubt given the impression that Robert Goddard kept to himself on the ranch, seeing only his wife and the crew, or whatever sponsors chose to visit. That impression is false. He attended church (although less often than in Worcester) and was a regular at weekly Rotary International chapter meetings. At his wife's urging, he sometimes met other couples for bridge foursomes — although he hated bridge, he would sit by with a book on his lap, taking part in the conversation. In short, he was a fairly normal member of the Roswell community.
He and Esther left that community for the last time on Independence Day 1942. After a series of meetings and some on-site demonstrations of "Nell", the Navy had decided to enlist Goddard in the war effort. To that end, they moved the useful parts of the Mescalero Ranch facilities to Indian Head Naval Station, on the Severn River in Maryland. Goddard had a six-month, renewable contract to develop a strap-on, liquid-fuel motor to push heavily-loaded seaplanes into the air: the JATO unit. This met all of its design goals in a static test on 13 November, and the Navy extended the contract. However, flight tests were a flop. The device was delicate, and its liquid oxygen plumbing did not take well to getting wet. Production JATO units used solid fuel rockets developed by a team from Cal Tech in an effort paralleling Dr. Goddard's. He was retained for the duration of the war, however, to do related engineering work — things like developing pumps and igniters for the laboratory next door. (This lab was run by a young fellow named Bob Truax, who later attained some renown.) Goddard was a small cog in a vast machine. It was a role he did not enjoy.
There were compensations, however. As the war expanded, he began to get inquiries from corporations: General Electric, Linde Air Products, Curtiss-Wright. A commercial offshoot of the American Rocket Society called Reaction Motors, Inc. offered him its presidency and a block of stock. Goddard eventually decided to hook up with Curtiss-Wright when the Navy released him. He bided his time with the small tasks assigned, meanwhile sending off a steady stream of affadavits to Hawley in Worcester.
D-Day arrived, full of hope and glory. He was home with Esther when the news came in over the radio. Then came the news of the German "Vengeance weapons" V-1 and V-2 — too little, too late to change the course of the war for the Third Reich. Yet, the mere existence of these devices, and their $3 billion development budget, oppressed Goddard with the sense that the leading edge of rocket development had passed him and his country by. When he had a chance to examine captured V-weapons after the war, these misgivings were largely confirmed. The V-1 used a motor based on his "resonance chamber," and the V-2 design was similar to the models he had been firing in New Mexico, only scaled up to space-reaching size.
"I watched him as he stared at the length and girth of the opened rocket," Henry Sachs remembered, "and went over to him.
`It looks like ours, Dr. Goddard,' I said."
`Yes, Mr. Sachs,' he answered, `it seems so.' " [9]
It is not certain whether the Germans, in making the V-2, actually copied Goddard's designs. Inventions are fairly often made independently at widely distant places within a short span of time. Also, the physics of rocketry dictates the shape and even the internal layout of the rockets to a considerable degree. Nevertheless, the similarities are striking — as shown in this comparison table.
Esther had been wondering about her husband's health for some time. True, he had always had problems, and always managed to work through them. But there had been changes lately. He seemed tireder, somehow, as if the fire had gone out of him. There were hints that his interest centered less on summoning the future than on preserving the past; he had been sorting and organizing his sealed archives, and writing summaries of them, although he kept much of this effort hidden from her. It was often difficult for him to speak; then his voice would clear again. Characteristically, he never complained, and he dismissed her concerns.
Early in 1945, the Navy awarded another six-month contract. He dutifully proceeded to fulfill it. Toward the end of May, Dr. Slack found a small growth in Goddard's throat. It seemed benign. Dr. Slack had "never heard of cancer superimposed on tuberculosis." [10] He has now.
Goddard's health declined quickly after that. About the middle of June, the growth was found to be malignant. Goddard was admitted to the University of Maryland hospital, where he underwent a laryngectomy. He held on for nearly two months — long enough to learn of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; long enough to hear that the Army had established a new rocket proving ground called White Sands just 100 miles from Roswell, and was starting to build a multi-stage rocket there; long enough to file a few more patent applications.
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it;
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it . . .
– Robert Browning, A Grammarian's Funeral
Shortly after nine on the morning of August 10th, Robert Goddard passed away without fuss or clamor. He was buried in Worcester's Hope Cemetery on 14 August 1945, the day World War II officially ended.

Part 3: Conquest Beyond Conquest
Robert Goddard's Legacy
How can we judge the work of a pioneer like Dr. Goddard, who was so far ahead of his time? I maintain that this is easy: He built rockets, and they worked. It does not matter that the science was new and strange, or that the technology was risky. The science was valid, as he proved; the technology could be made safer and more reliable, as it has been.
It has been said that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Dr. Goddard's claims — his public speculations, if you will — were indeed extraordinary (when he first made them): He proposed to send a mechanical device into the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere, or perhaps even beyond the atmosphere.
(Leave aside for the moment his private speculations: flying through space to other planets; ships powered by sunlight; trips to the stars, with the crews frozen so they could live long enough to complete their journeys.)
If Dr. Goddard's claims were extraordinary enough to demand extraordinary evidence, I submit that he provided that evidence. True, he did not accomplish the whole job; his rockets never launched a payload. But he achieved enough to prove to any thoughtful person that the whole job was achievable. Why, then, did his work attract so little support?
That was a trick question. For, of course, his work did attract support, or at least strong interest — just not from the right people.
• The German researchers were well aware of the value of Goddard's work. During much of the 1930s, they wrote to him requesting information of the sort that scientists usually share with each other. Goddard did not oblige them because in most cases he was not ready to publish. He was also aware of the military significance of his designs and foresaw that Germany was likely to become an enemy once again. The huge complex at Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea is a testament to how seriously The Third Reich took Goddard's concepts. After the war, Dr. Walter Dornberger (former commander of Peenemünde) wrote that he recalled the hunger in Germany for news of Goddard's work: "The reason was that Professor Goddard was one of the outstanding rocket pioneers in his country. We could not understand that a man of his genius did not get sufficient support of his government in time." [1]
• Stalin's Russia understood the importance of Goddard's work. His 1919 paper triggered in that country a rediscovery of Tsiolkovsky and other early experimenters, and set in motion the creation of the Soviet aerospace establishment which proved itself so formidable a generation later.
• Many (though not all) of Dr. Goddard's fellow scientists perceived the possibilities inherent in his experiments, and encouraged his efforts.
• Private groups in the U.S. and elsewhere fully appreciated the potential of Goddard's work, and saw where it might lead. Notable examples are the American Rocket Society and the British Interplanetary Society.
In retrospect, it seems that the U.S. Military was the only group that was NOT aware of the military significance of the rocket. Harry Guggenheim arranged for Dr. Goddard to pitch the possibility of long-range, liquid-fueled rockets (what we know today as ICBMs) to a tri-service panel in May of 1940. (This, remember, was 15 years after he began flying his rockets.) After listening closely, the Army representative said he thought the war (then raging in Europe) would be won by trench mortars. The attendees from the Navy and Air Corps were only interested in those JATO units. (Dr. G. Edward Pendray, a founder of the American Rocket Society, is said to have described the decision to put Goddard to work developing these devices as equivalent to "trying to harness Pegasus to a plow.") [2]
It is also worth noting that the governments of Britain and America, both with strong pro-rocket groups, were slower than Russia and Germany in devoting significant resources to rocket development. Deliberative democracy vs. impulsive dictatorship? Perhaps, but if so it suggests that the leaders of democracies cannot recognize worthwhile new ideas even if they work, unless those ideas happen to solve a problem that's hanging over their heads.
So perhaps the greatest legacy Robert Goddard left us is not his developments in astronautics, valuable as those are, but the reminder of how pervasive shortsighted expediency has become in this country.
Though Robert Goddard might have achieved far more had not cancer cut his life short in 1945, a fair assessment must be that what he did achieve, in the face of his own poor health, plus general ridicule, chronic shortages of funds, and government indifference, is truly monumental. Speaking from the perspective of 1960, Dr. Pendray declared: "If his own countrymen had listened to Dr. Goddard, the United States would be far ahead of its present position in the international space race. There might, in fact, have been no race." [3]
However belatedly, the truth of this observation is now officially recognized. Some of the many posthumous tributes to Goddard are:
• There is (or was) a Goddard Wing at the Roswell Museum, with the Eden Valley launch tower as an important exhibit.
• The U.S. Naval Powder Factory at Indian Head, Maryland opened a Goddard Power (not powder) Plant in June 1957.
• The United States 86th Congress in September 1959 ordered the mint to design and strike a gold medal honoring Goddard's pioneering research in rocket propulsion.
• Goddard joined a very select group in June 1960 when the Smithsonian awarded him its Langley Medal for achievements in aerodynamics.
• In Auburn, Massachusetts, a granite marker was unveiled in July 1960 at the site of the first liquid-fuel rocket flight. This marker came from the American Rocket Society. The ARS also established a Goddard Medal to be given annually for the best contribution to rocket research.
• And finally, NASA named its center closest to Washington the Goddard Space Flight Center. GSFC dedication ceremonies were held on the chilly afternoon of 16 March 1961, exactly 35 years after that first Auburn flight.

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