Robert Goddard: The Father of Modern Rocketry Essay example -- essays

Robert Hutchings Goddard was a futurist. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on October 5, 1882. He was the son of a machinist and his father was known for his brilliance with machinery and tools. The Goddards moved from Worcester to Boston while Robert was just an infant, because his father went in one-half and half on a local machine tools shop. In Boston, is where the young Robert Goddard spent his youth as an only child, and most of his younger courses were spent alone(predicate) at home due to his mothers illness with tuberculosis. Robert would not see his familys hometown of Worcester again until he was seventeen in 1899. Much of his demeanor was spent as an ill child (Spangenburg, 10), and he was an average student with an aversion to mathematics. Illness kept him out of school entirely in that twilight of 1899, and by this time Robert had only completed his freshman year of high school. Although he was unable to spend a lot of time within institutional walls, the you ng Goddard was not without a strong yearning to learn--at least to learn science. Much of the time he spent chuck at home sick was consumed reading the Scientific American, or books from the library both science and science fiction novels-especially H.G. Wells War of the Worlds, a novel he would re-examine a great deal in ulterior years (Burrows, 32).Robert Goddard found happiness while doing his chores and often used found this time for relaxing. Like many young seventeen year olds, the time was spent daydreaming and this was the case on the 19th day of October 1899. Little did the young man know that this entry in his diary would veer his entire life As I looked toward the fields in the east I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the contingency of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale if sent up from the meadow at my feet. . .It seemed to me that a weight whirling around a horizontal shaft, moving more rapidly above than b elow, could furnish lift by virtue of the greater centrifugal force at the top of the path. I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended, for existence at last seemed very purposive. (Yost, 145)This new idea was known as the linear-force-from-eccentric-rotation, and although it was only a daydream of the young man, it was the spark that would ignite Goddards unendin... ...f his research, the inventor was able to accomplish his goal of creating a rocket capable of flight, and his design would later reach the stars. Furthermore, had his work been sponsored by the Armed Forces after the First World War, the space race would have not been such a challenge for the unite States (Yost, 144). Dr. Goddard is still revered and remembered as the Father of Modern Rocketry.WORKS CITEDBurrows, William. THIS NEW OCEAN THE story OF THE FIRSTSPACE AGE. New York Random House, 1998.Freeman, Marsha. HOW WE GOT TO THE MOON THE STORY OF THEGERMAN PIONEER. Wash DC 21st Century S cience, 1993. Lehman, Milton. THIS HIGH MAN THE LIFE OF ROBERT GODDARD.New York Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1963.Levine, Alan. THE MISSILE AND SPACE RACE. WestportPraeger, 1994.Spangenburg, Ray & Moser, Diane. SPACE EXPLORATION springTHE SPACE FRONTIER. New York Oxford, 1989.Stockton, William & Wilford, John. SPACELINER. New York Times, 1981.Time-Life Books. OUTBOUND VOYAGE THROUGH THE UNIVERSE. Richmond Time-Life, 1989.Yost, Edna. MODERN AMERICANS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY.Second Ed., New York Dodd, Mead, 1962.