launch sequence
Rocket launches may seem commonplace today.
In 2018 there was an average of
more than three launches every week.
But In the past, the idea of
sending rockets into space was purely science fiction.
It wasn’t until the early 20th century,
when a man named Robert Goddard tried to
convince the world that space travel
didn’t have to be fiction.
Decades before the Space Age began,
he envisioned using rockets to send science experiments
into the upper atmosphere, beyond the heights
attainable by weather balloons at the time.
He even imagined,
and calculated in detail,
what it would take to send a rocket carrying
a mass of flash powder to the surface of the Moon.
The powder, he believed,
could be ignited on the surface and
would be visible from Earth.
The public caught wind of Goddard’s wild ideas
and he became the topic of
national conversation and press.
A lot of it negative.
Goddard’s reply:
Goddard persisted with his dream.
He went on to build and launch
the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket,
the basic design of which is still used to this day.
In July 1969, 50 years after Goddard first proposed
sending a rocket to the Moon,
Apollo 11 launched on the six-and-a-half-million-pound Saturn V rocket.
Among the three astronauts onboard was Buzz Aldrin.
And on his journey to the Moon, he carried with him
a miniature version of Robert Goddard’s autobiography.
Thankfully, Goddard was not forgotten by history.
His name lives on to this day.
On May 1, 1959, NASA dedicated its
first spaceflight complex in his honor as the
Goddard Space Flight Center.
Sixty years later, the center continues to
fulfill his vision by building spacecraft, instruments and
new technology to study Earth, the Sun,
our solar system and the universe.