My Man Goddard

Man! I can't get the SPACE RACE out of my head. Every single time I lay down to go to bed or take a nap or watch a movie or read a book my mind starts wandering back to the 50s and 60s and wishing I could have been alive for the beautiful days.

But thinking this I remind myself that there are some very specific people that were VERY important in the Space Race before the Space Race even began. One being Robert Goddard.

In the late 19th century in Massachusetts a young man had the huge dream of flying in space. This young man's name was Robert Goddard. For years Goddard worked on making rockets. However he was much made fun of for his crazy dreams. The New York Times mocked young Goddard saying he should retake high-school science. Didn't he know there is no air in space? Had he ever read the law of physics? To move in space you have to have something to push against and without air there is nothing to push against! However, none of this discouraged Goddard in the least. He continued dreaming and designing rockets.

One day Goddard and a group of his friends decided to launch a rocket they had built. It tragically ended in a small disaster when the rocket went farther horizontally than it did vertically and landed in his aunt's cabbage patch. The results of this accidents was the passing of a law forbidding anyone to launch a rocket in the state of Massachusetts. But this did not dissuade Robert Goddard. If one state wouldn't let him launch rockets then he would simply move to another state that would. Goddard moved to Roswell, New Mexico where he continued and experimenting and launching.

Dr. Robert Goddard made many important discoveries and invented many great things, useful for spaceflight. Goddard patented all his inventions. However after his death in 1945 the US government took all his patented work upsetting Goddard's wife, Esther Christine Goddard. She sue the US government and was given one million dollars. A virtual steal for the government considering all Goddard's work was worth well over sixty-million dollars. All his life's work was an important contribution to the American space program. And to correct what they had originally said about Goddard the New York times made a formal apology, of a successful rocket launch into space, saying it was indeed possible to fly in space.