Goddard, Robert Hutchings (1882–1945)

Robert H Goddard, the ‘father of US rocketry’, in the 1930s. It was Goddard who pioneered the idea of rockets consisting of two or three stages, each with their own means of propulsion. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) named the Goddard Space Flight Center at Greenbelt, Maryland, USA, after him in 1962.

US rocket pioneer. He launched the first liquid-fuelled rocket at Auburn, Massachusetts, in 1926. By 1932 his rockets had gyroscopic control and could carry cameras to record instrument readings. Two years later a Goddard rocket achieved the world altitude record with an ascent of 3 km/1.9 mi.

Goddard developed the principle of combining liquid fuels in a rocket motor, the technique used subsequently in every practical space vehicle. He was the first to prove by actual test that a rocket will work in a vacuum and he was the first to fire a rocket faster than the speed of sound.

Goddard was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. At Clark University in his home town, and at Mount Wilson, California, he carried out experiments with naval signal rockets, and went on to design and build his own rocket motors. On the USA's entry into World War I, he turned his energies to investigating the military application of rockets. In 1929, instruments, and a camera to record them, were carried aloft for the first time.

The military rockets Goddard developed in World War II were more advanced than the German V2, although smaller. A few days before the end of the war he demonstrated a rocket fired from a launching tube.