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How Robert Goddard Helped Lead America Into Space |
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(MUSIC)
VOICE
ONE:
This is
Steve Ember.
VOICE
TWO:
And
this is Shirley Griffith with the VOA Special English program,
EXPLORATIONS. Today, we report on some of the early research in the development
of rockets. We tell the story of American physicist and rocket scientist
Robert Hutchings Goddard.
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VOICE
ONE:
Robert
Goddard once said that the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the
reality of tomorrow. It was his scientific work that gave hope to many of
our dreams about space...and then turned them into
reality.
Robert
Goddard's many studies and tests in the early Nineteen-Hundreds led to the
first modern rocket. Then he developed rockets with more than one
engine. Each engine pushed the rocket higher and higher out of Earth's
atmosphere. His ideas are still used today. So, in a way, every
rocket that flies today is a Goddard rocket.
VOICE
TWO:
Robert
Goddard was far ahead of his time. Orville and Wilbur Wright made the
first controlled airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in
Nineteen-Oh-Three. Other scientists and inventors after that experimented
with planes. But Robert Goddard wanted to make a machine that flew in a
different way from a plane. He called his first two designs, "rocket
apparatus."
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Robert
Goddard working on a rocket. |
Goddard
developed and flew many rockets that got their power from solid fuels --
chemicals made hard. Then, in Nineteen-Twenty-Five, he made and tested
the first rocket engine using a soft chemical fuel. In
Nineteen-Twenty-Six, he successfully fired the world's first liquid-fuel
rocket.
Many
historians consider that rocket flight as important as the first airplane
flight by the Wright brothers. Goddard's work proved that machines could
travel out of Earth's atmosphere, into space.
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VOICE
ONE:
Robert
Hutchings Goddard was born in Worcester, in the state of Massachusetts, in
Eighteen-Eighty-Two. His father knew a lot about machines. When Robert was a child, his family moved to Boston, Massachusetts.
There his father became a part owner of a business that made knives for
different machines.
Robert
was the only child. His mother suffered from the lung disease
tuberculosis. She was sick and weak, because at that time, there were no
medicines to treat tuberculosis successfully.
Robert,
too, was often sick. He could not keep up with his school work. His
family moved back to Worcester when he was seventeen. He was almost too
old to remain in high school. Yet he was behind other children his
age. He was not a good student.
He
hated mathematics. This subject, of course, was what would help make him
famous later.
VOICE
TWO:
One
beautiful autumn day, Robert was sitting in a tree in the back of his
house. He was reading a book by British author H. G. Wells. The
book was called “War of the Worlds.” Something strange happened to
him. He later thought that perhaps Wells's book
had something to do with it.
"As
I looked toward the fields in the east," he said, "I imagined how
wonderful it would be to make something that could rise to the planet
Mars. I imagined how this thing, in a small size, would look if sent up
from the ground at my feet. I was a different boy when I came down from
that tree. For, at last, my life seemed to have some purpose."
VOICE
ONE:
Robert
Goddard never talked much about what happened to him up in the tree on that
day, October Nineteenth. But he celebrated October Nineteenth as a
holiday for the rest of his life. On that day, he had formed the idea of
making something that would go higher than anything had ever gone before.
He felt
this was the whole purpose of his life. He was not troubled that many
people thought he was foolish. He was sure he could do it.
"I
know," he said, "the first thing I must do is to get an education,
especially in mathematics. Yes, I must become an expert in mathematics,
even if I hate it."
VOICE
TWO:
Two
years passed before Robert was healthy enough to go back to school. He
entered South High School in Worcester. He worked and worked until he no
longer hated mathematics.
Robert's
father spent all his money to care for his sick wife. He did not have enough to
pay for Robert's education after high school. Robert got financial help
from others so he could go to a technical school in Worcester.
There
he had very good teachers. They helped him become an expert in
mathematics and physics.
VOICE
ONE:
Robert
completed his studies at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and became a
teacher of physics there. He also continued his studies at Clark
University.
He
began to develop the idea of multiple-stage rockets. These were rockets
with more than one engine. Each engine would push the rocket higher and
higher. The power for the rockets would come from burning two gases, hydrogen
and oxygen.
After
one year at Clark University, Robert went to Princeton College in New Jersey to
do more studies on rockets.
VOICE
TWO:
"Often,"
he said, "I worked all through the night. At last I learned how to
send a rocket higher than anything had ever gone before. But the work was
too much for me. I was feeling sick again. I had to stop my work
and go to a doctor.
"X-rays
showed that, like my mother, I was very sick with tuberculosis. The
doctor said I had just two weeks to live. He put me in bed for a long
rest. But I meant to live. I told myself I could not die. I
had work to do."
VOICE
ONE:
At the
end of two weeks, Robert Goddard was still alive. In time, he started to
work again.
In
October, Nineteen-Thirteen, Goddard completed plans for his first rocket.
In May of the next year, he completed plans for another rocket. These two
plans are the first ever made for a rocket that would carry people into
space. In Nineteen-Fourteen, he received two patents from the United
States government to protect his rights to his inventions.
(MUSIC)
VOICE
TWO:
Robert
Goddard received money from the Smithsonian Institution to help him continue
his work. In Nineteen-Nineteen, the Smithsonian published several of his
reports explaining his research. The publication was called "A
Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes." It told about his search for
methods of raising weather-recording instruments higher than balloons could
go. It told about how he developed the mathematical theories of rockets.
In the report,
Goddard also noted the possibility of a rocket reaching the moon. There
was a big dispute in the press about the possibility of this. Many people
thought he was foolish for suggesting such an impossible thing.
VOICE
ONE:
Goddard
continued to need money to continue his research. The world famous pilot
Charles Lindbergh helped him get money from the Guggenheim Foundation.
Goddard
quickly began to work on plans for bigger rockets. During the
Nineteen-Thirties, he tested his rockets at a research center in Roswell, New
Mexico. He tested the first rocket controlled by electricity. The
control equipment was three-hundred meters from the place of launching.
He also tested the first rocket controlled by a gyroscope. Gyroscopes help
keep rockets aimed in the right direction.
VOICE
TWO:
Goddard
did all his work in the United States, yet his work became known around the
world. Scientists in Germany used his ideas to help build the V-Two
rocket that was used in World War Two.
During
World War Two, Goddard helped the United States Navy develop some rocket motors
and ways to launch jet planes. He continued work he had begun at the end
of World War One that led to the bazooka, a weapon that fires small rockets.
VOICE
ONE:
Robert
Goddard died in Ninety-Forty-Five of cancer. He was sixty-three years
old. He had been sick most of his life, but he died a happy man. He
received many honors for his work. He believed his life had been a full
one. He felt lucky that the great dream that came to him, out of nowhere
when he was only seventeen years old, had become real.
VOICE
TWO:
Robert
Goddard received a special honor many years after his death. In
Nineteen-Fifty-Nine, the United States established the Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. It was the
government's first major scientific laboratory used completely for space
science.
The
Goddard Space Flight Center honors the man whose work proved that machines
could travel out of Earth's atmosphere, into space.
(MUSIC)
VOICE
ONE:
This is
Steve Ember.
VOICE
TWO:
And
this is Shirley Griffith. Listen again next week at this time to the
Special English program, EXPLORATIONS, on the Voice of America.