VOICE ONE:
This is Steve Ember.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Shirley Griffith with the VOA Special Englishprogram, EXPLORATIONS. Today, we report on some of the earlyresearch in the development of rockets. We tell the story ofAmerican physicist and rocket scientist Robert Hutchings Goddard.
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VOICE ONE:
Robert Goddard once said that “the dream of yesterday is the hopeof today and the reality of tomorrow.” It was his scientific workthat gave hope to many of our dreams about space … and then turnedthem into reality.
Robert Goddard’s many studies and tests in the earlyNineteen-Hundreds led to the first rocket. Then he developed rocketswith more than one engine. Each engine pushed the rocket higher andhigher 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 WilburWright made the first controlled airplane flight at Kitty Hawk,North Carolina, in Nineteen-Oh-Three. Other scientists and inventorsafter that experimented with planes. But Robert Goddard wanted tomake a machine that flew in a different way from a plane. He calledhis first two designs, “rocket apparatus.”
Goddard developed and flew many rockets that got their power fromsolid fuels — chemicals made hard. Then, in Nineteen-Twenty-Five,he made and tested the first rocket engine using a soft chemicalfuel. In Nineteen-Twenty-Six, he successfully fired the world’sfirst liquid-fuel rocket.
Many historians consider thatrocket flight as important as the first airplane flight by theWright brothers. Goddard’s work proved that machines could travelout of Earth’s atmosphere, into space.
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VOICE ONE:
Robert Hutchings Goddard was born in Worcester, in the state ofMassachusetts, in Eighteen-Eighty-Two. His father knew a lot aboutmachines. When Robert was a child, his family moved to Boston,Massachusetts. There his father became a part owner of a businessthat made knives for different machines.
Robert was the only child. His mother suffered from the lungdisease 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 schoolwork. His family moved back to Worcester when he was seventeen. Hewas almost too old to remain in high school. Yet he was behind otherchildren 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 theback of his house. He was reading a book by British author H. G.Wells. The book was called War of the Worlds. Something strangehappened to him. He later thought that perhaps Wells’ book hadsomething to do with it.
“As I looked toward the fields in the east,” he said, “I imaginedhow wonderful it would be to make something that could rise to theplanet Mars. I imagined how this thing, in a small size, would lookif sent up from the ground at my feet. I was a different boy when Icame down from that tree. For, at last, my life seemed to have somepurpose.”
VOICE ONE:
Robert Goddard never talked much about what happened to him up inthe tree on that day, October Nineteenth. But he celebrated OctoberNineteenth as a holiday for the rest of his life. On that day, hehad formed the idea of making something that would go higher thenanything had ever gone before.
He felt this was the whole purpose of his life. He was sure hecould do it.
“I know,” he said, “the first thing I must do is to get aneducation, especially in mathematics. Yes, I must become an expertin mathematics, even if I hate it.”
VOICE TWO:
Two years passed before Robert was healthy enough to go back toschool. He entered South High School in Worcester. He worked andworked until he no longer hated mathematics.
Robert’s father spent all his money to care for his sick wife. Hedid not have enough to pay for Robert’s education after high school.Robert got financial help from others so he could go to a technicalschool in Worcester.
There he had very good teachers. They helped him become an expertin mathematics and physics.
VOICE ONE:
Robert completed his studies at the Worcester PolytechnicInstitute and became a teacher of physics there. He also continuedhis studies at Clark University.
He began to develop the idea of multiple-stage rockets. Thesewere rockets with more than one engine. Each engine would push therocket higher and higher. The power for the rockets would come fromburning two gases, hydrogen and oxygen.
After one year at Clark University, Robert went to PrincetonCollege in New Jersey to do more studies on rockets.
VOICE TWO:
“Often,” he said, “I worked all through the night. At last Ilearned how to send a rocket higher than anything had ever gonebefore. 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 withtuberculosis. The doctor said I had just two weeks to live. He putme in bed for a long rest. But I meant to live. I told myself Icould 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 hisfirst rocket. In May of the next year, he completed plans foranother rocket. These two plans are the first ever made for a rocketthat would carry people into space. In Nineteen-Fourteen, hereceived two patents from the United States government to protecthis rights to his inventions.
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VOICE TWO:
Robert Goddard received money from the Smithsonian Institution tohelp him continue his work. In Nineteen-Nineteen, the Smithsonianpublished several of his reports explaining his research. Thepublication was called “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes.” Ittold about his search for methods of raising weather recordinginstruments higher than balloons could go. It told about how hedeveloped the mathematical theories of rockets.
In the report, Goddard also noted the possibility of a rocketreaching the moon. There was a big dispute in the press about thepossibility of this. Many people thought he was foolish forsuggesting such an impossible thing.
VOICE ONE:
Goddard continued to need money to continue his research. Theworld famous pilot Charles Lindbergh helped him get money from theGuggenheim Foundation.
Goddard quickly began to work on plans for bigger rockets. Duringthe Nineteen-Thirties, he tested his rockets at a research center inRoswell, New Mexico. He tested the first rocket controlled byelectricity. The control equipment was three-hundred meters from theplace of launching. He also tested the first rocket controlled by agyroscope. Gyroscopes help keep rockets aimed in the rightdirection.
VOICE TWO:
Goddard did all his work in the United States, yet his workbecame known around the world. Scientists in Germany used his ideasto help build the V-Two rocket that was used in World War Two.
During World War Two, Goddard helped the United States Navydevelop some rocket motors and ways to launch jet planes. Hecontinued work he had begun at the end of World War One that led tothe bazooka, a weapon that fires small rockets.
VOICE ONE:
Robert Goddard died in Ninety-Forty-Five of cancer. He wassixty-three years old. He had been sick most of his life, but hedied a happy man. He received many honors for his work. He believedhis life had been a full one. He felt lucky that the great dreamthat came to him, out of nowhere, when he was only seventeen yearsold had become real.
VOICE TWO:
Robert Goddard received a special honor many years after hisdeath. In Nineteen-Fifty-Nine, the United States established theGoddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, near Washington,D-C. It was the government’s first major scientific laboratory usedcompletely for space science.
The Goddard Space Flight Center honors the man whose work provedthat machines could travel out of Earth’s atmosphere, into space.
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VOICE ONE:
This is Steve Ember.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Shirley Griffith. Listen again next week at this timeto the Special English program, EXPLORATIONS, on the Voice ofAmerica.