Robert Goddard and the Invention of the Liquid-Fueled Rocket
The 100th Anniversary of First Flight
Jonathan Coopersmith
Emeritus Professor of the History of Technology
Texas A&M University
Sponsored by PSW Science Member Ciprian Ivanof
Video
About the Lecture
Robert H. Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926, transforming the use of rockets for space exploration, fostering a flowering of broad theoretical and experimental work on rockets, the organization of rocket societies in several countries, and a proliferation of writings on rocketry and the use of rockets to explore the cosmos. As historian Frank H. Winter put it, Goddard brought “the seeds of the idea of the space rocket into the public consciousness.”
In 1916 Goddard applied to the Smithsonian Institution to fund his rocketry experiments. And, when in January 1920 the Smithsonian published his paper “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes” (with an accompanying press release), Goddard’s work received its first broad public attention. The paper described liquid-fueled rockets, their possibilities for enabling humanity to reach into space, and the potential they offered for sending space vehicles to the Moon. The report generated hundreds of newspaper articles, ranging from dismissing him as an impractical academic dreamer to hailing him as potentially turning the 1865 Jules Verne’s novel, From the Earth to the Moon, into reality. Perhaps the most famous was the New York Times critique of Goddard as an out-of-touch professor.
Goddard’s report sparked public interest in space rocketry around the world and inspired researchers like Germany’s Hermann Oberth and Wernher von Braun, the Frenchman Robert Esnault-Pelterie, and American Frank A. Malina to pursue sophisticated rocket research, ultimately leading to the V2 rockets of World War II, the space programs of the former Soviet Union, the United States, Europe, China, India and Japan (among others) and the current renaissance of rocket development taking place all over the world.
This lecture will discuss Goddard’s development of the liquid-fueled rocket and its further development in the United States and around the world.
Selected Reading & Media References
Michael Neufeld, “Robert Goddard and the First Liquid Propellant Rocket”: https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/robert-goddard-and-first-liquid-propellant-rocket
Roger Launius and Jonathan Coopersmith, AIAA Goddard Centennial Series: https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/goddardcentennial-origins/
David A. Clary, Rocket Man: Robert H. Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age
The Robert Goddard collection at Clark University: https://commons.clarku.edu/goddardlaunch/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
About the Speaker
Jonathan Coopersmith is Professor Emeritus of the History of Technology at Texas A&M University where he spent his entire academic career. Jonathan also was a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer and Researcher at Tokyo Institute of Technology and a Visiting Professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Jonathan’s work focuses on understanding how inventions are made and how technology is developed and comes into widespread use, viewed not only in a US national context but more broadly in the context of international developments and their cross-border influences. He is especially known for research and writing on the fax machine’s multinational development, on Russian electrification, on technology transfer, and on failures in technology development.
Jonathan has written numerous articles and several book chapters as well as two books: FAXED: The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine and The Electrification of Russia, 1880–1926. He is also co-editor with Roger Launius of Taking Off: A Century of Manned Flight.
Among other honors and awards, Jonathan is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, received the Sally Hacker Prize of the Society for the History of Technology, and his book, FAXED, was a co-recipient of the Business History Conference Hagley Prize.
Jonathan earned an AB in History and the Philosophy of Science at Princeton University, and a D Phil in Modern History at the University of Oxford.