Robert Goddard

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Old Print Article: “First Volunteer For Leap To Mars,” New York Times (1920)

March 20, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Some had too little faith in Robert Goddard and his rockets, but Captain Claude Collins had too much. The president of the Aviators’ Club of Pennsylvania offered, nearly a century ago, to be blasted to our neighboring planet, fueled in his dreams to a good extent by Goddard’s exciting work. From an article that contains a telegraph from the would-be spaceman in the February 5, 1920 New York Times:

“By Telegraph to the Editor of The New York Times.

PHILADELPHIA–In order to aid science and arouse the people of the nation to act to make America the peer of other nations in the air, I make the following proposal in full seriousness and stand ready to carry out its stipulation at any time. I am connected with no commercial concern, and am not making this proposal for monetary gains.

Believing the plans of a noted scientist to send a super-rocket from the earth to Mars, in the body of which a person would be stationed, can be developed into a reality, I hereby volunteer to attempt this inter-planet leap and offer to do so, gratis, in an endeavor to realize these aims of science and to successfully alight in the neighbor-world, providing the following stipulations are carried out and to reciprocate for the danger entailed. I am first enabled to make a tour of the nation by air to appeal directly to the people in an endeavor to awaken America to the menace we face in the air and to bring some action which may result in placing the United States on a par with other nations aeronautically, before possibly terminating my earthly existence.

It shall be agreed that:

1. I shall be permitted to assist in planning the construction of the rocket and the details of the venture.

2. Communication, either by radio, light or other means shall be definitely established with Mars and a rocket, similar to that which I am to make the leap, be constructed and successfully launched and landed on that planet previous to my start.

3. A board of ten prominent scientists shall agree to the practicability of the completed rocket and possible success of the same in reaching the planet with me safely.

4. Ten days before the scheduled start of the leap insurance to the amount of $10,000 shall be taken out for me in favor of my heirs, with the understanding and consummation of a further agreement to the effect that none of the parties to this agreement be held responsible for anything which may happen to me under any circumstances. 

5. Representatives of the press of New York City in co-operation with the Aircraft Manufacturers; L.L. Driggs, President of the American Flying Club; Jefferson de M. Thompson, President of the Aero Club of America; the scientist who shall make the rocket, as well as any other persons desired by the aforenamed, heads of the institutions he represents, shall supervise all plans and arrangements for the proposed leap and equipment; they shall also back up and assist me in compiling addresses and successfully completing the tour of the nation and visits to all large American cities with the understanding that an airplane be furnished by the aircraft manufacturers and my expenses be covered in the usual lecture method to be later agreed upon.

This agreement shall become valid upon the date signed by the first of those parties named and expire six months after that time, date of expiration being not later than Dec. 31, 1920.

Under no circumstances shall I fail to make the leap after the above stipulations have been complied with during the life of this agreement, unless with the approval of those who have become party to it.

(Signed)
CAPTAIN CLAUDE R. COLLINS
New York City Air Police.
President Aviators’ Club of Pennsylvania; Organizer Philadelphia Air Force; International Licensed Airplane Pilot.”

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“How Wonderful It Would Be To Make Some Device Which Had Even The Possibility Of Ascending To Mars”

October 21, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Charles Lindbergh photo of Goddard’s rocket, 1935, Roswell, New Mexico.

From a brief post by Alexis Madrigal at the Atlantic about the source of Robert Goddard’s rocketeering:

“I don’t tend to believe most origin stories about how people came to do their life’s work, but I love this one about Robert Goddard, the father of American rocketry, anyway. As told by Goddard Space Center science writer, Daniel Pendick, it was on this day in 1899 (!) that the scientist first decided that he wanted to ‘fly without wings’ to Mars. He climbed up a cherry tree to do some pruning and had a vision of his/the future.

‘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,’ one of his biographers, Milton Lehman, recorded. ‘I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended, for existence at last seemed very purposive.'”

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“This Was, Of Course, Science Fiction. But It Was Also Prophetic.”

June 22, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a smart NPR post, Amanda Katz wonders what the advent of e-books will mean to the generational passing down of volumes, using as an example a boyhood copy of War of the Worlds owned by pioneering rocketeer Robert Goddard. The opening:

“In 1898, a man bought a book for his 16-year-old nephew. ‘Many happy retoins [sic]. Uncle Spud,’ he wrote on a blank page at the front.

The book: H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, then just out in America from Harper & Brothers.The ripping tale of a Martian attack that set the mold for them all, it’s almost more striking to a reader today for its turn-of-the-century detail: carriage-horse accidents, urgent telegrams, news only via newspapers. Toward the end of the novel, the narrator gets ahold of a first post-attack copy of the Daily Mail: ‘I learned nothing fresh except that already in one week the examination of the Martian mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other things, the article assured me what I did not believe at the time, that the ‘Secret of Flying’ was discovered.’

This was, of course, science fiction. But it was also prophetic. Uncle Spud’s teenage nephew — who stamped his name on the first page of the novel and read it religiously once a year — would himself go on to discover many secrets of flying. That nephew was Robert Hutchings Goddard, inventor of the liquid-fuel rocket.” (Thanks Browser.)

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Robert Goddard Makes Rockets In Roswell (1940)

April 29, 2011 in Excerpts, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Goddard, far left, was a rocket man. (Image by National Geographic Society.)

Known as the “Father of American Rocketry,” Dr. Robert H. Goddard believed even before the 1920s that we could reach the stars, though some scoffed at him. In this classic 1940 photograph, Goddard and his team labor over a rocket with turbopumps in his workshop in Roswell, New Mexico. An excerpt from a Time article about the naysayers who took aim at Goddard’s far-flung ambitions:

“Robert Goddard was not a happy man when he read his copy of the New York Times on Jan. 13, 1920. For some time, he had feared he might be in for a pasting in the press, but when he picked up the paper that day, he was stunned.

Not long before, Goddard, a physics professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., had published an arid little paper on an outrageous topic, rocket travel. Unlike most of his colleagues, Goddard believed rocketry was a viable technology, and his paper, primly titled ‘A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes,’ was designed to prove it. For the lay reader, there wasn’t much in the writing to excite interest, but at the end, the buttoned-up professor unbuttoned a bit. If you used his technology to build a rocket big enough, he argued, and if you primed it with fuel that was powerful enough, you just might be able to reach the moon with it.

Goddard meant his moon musings to be innocent enough, but when the Times saw them, it pounced. As anyone knew, the paper explained with an editorial eye roll, space travel was impossible, since without atmosphere to push against, a rocket could not move so much as an inch. Professor Goddard, it was clear, lacked ‘the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.'”

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