The first liquid-fuel rocket
Two and a half seconds, twelve metres up, in a cabbage field
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Solid fuel burns until it is spent; liquid fuel can be throttled and shut off, and that is the precondition for steering a rocket. Goddard was ridiculed by the New York Times in 1920, which wrote that he lacked “the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools” because a rocket supposedly could not work in vacuum. The paper printed a retraction in July 1969, the day after Apollo 11 was on its way to the moon. German engineers followed his work closely in the 1930s.
For children
Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fuel rocket from a cabbage field in Massachusetts. It flew for two and a half seconds and reached twelve metres. Every rocket that has since reached space uses the same principle.
Sources
- Goddard, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes (Smithsonian, 1919)
- NASA: Robert H. Goddard og den første væskeraketten
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