The Enigma of Robert H. Goddard

Abstract

The Enigma of Robert H. Goddard J. D. HUNLEY Robert H. Goddard has been characterized both as “the father of modern rocketry” and as a man who, because of his aloofness, “had meager influence on contemporaries.”1 As these conflicting views sug­ gest, despite the rather extensive literature on this important rocket pioneer he remains something of a mystery. The aim of this article is not to decide which view is correct. Both are valid as far as they go. As the first person known to have launched a liquid-propellant rocket (in 1926), Goddard deserves, arguably, to be acknowledged as in some sense the progenitor of modern rocketry. Yet, as a loner who avoided publicity and remained highly secretive about most of the technical details of his liquid-propellant rockets, he failed to have more than an inspirational influence on most specific developments in modern rocketry. This is so even though he anticipated a great many of these developments in the patented components of his rockets.2 Clearly, Goddard was a highly gifted man who achieved numerous significant “firsts” in rocket development. Yet he failed to reach the goal he set for himself—to send a rocket to extremely high altitudes. Given his abilities, why did Goddard fail to accomplish that goal, and why did he remain so secretive and thus also fail to influence future Dr. Hunley is a historian in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration History Office. He would like to thank Roger D. Launius, Frank H. Winter, Michael J. Neufeld, Lee D. Saegesser, and R. Cargill Hall for their penetrating comments on various drafts of this article. Thanks also to Dorothy E. Mosakowski for her incompara­ ble assistance in going through the Goddard Papers at Clark University. 1 In order of appearance, quotations are from Wernher von Braun and Frederick I. Ordway III, with Dave Dooling, Space Travel: A History (New York, 1985), p. 37, and Walter A. McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York, 1985), p. 77; elsewhere (p. 20) McDougall depicts Goddard as one of the “great pioneers of modern rocketry.” 2On the question of Goddard’s limited influence on rocket development, see, e.g., Frank Winter, Prelude to the Space Age: The Rocket Societies (Washington, D.C., 1983), p. 14. On Goddard’s patents, see Esther C. Goddard and G. Edward Pendray, eds., The Papers of Robert H. Goddard, 3 vols. continuously paginated (New York, 1970), p. 1651 (hereafter cited as Goddard Papers').© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/95/3602-0001$01.00 327 328 J. D. Hunley rocket developments more directly? This article argues that God­ dard’s upbringing by an inventor father in Worcester, Massachusetts; his personal experiences in overcoming the limitations tuberculosis imposed on his activities; the year-to-year nature of grants he re­ ceived to support his research; and a personal inclination to mysticism all combined to influence his methods of rocket development. Simply put, besides remaining a loner, he failed to follow the step-by-step procedures called for by standard engineering practice. As a result, his rockets never reached the altitudes he sought to attain. My analysis builds on the work of historians who have previously written about Goddard, but it offers one new interpretation along with several details and nuances not available in the existing second­ ary literature on the man’s work, achievements, and failures. By far the most extensive account of Goddard’s life is the biography by Milton Lehman, Robert H. Goddard: A Pioneer ofSpace Research.3 This still useful and readable book presents a highly sympathetic portrait that covers the man’s major accomplishments and failings in an intimate but not uncritical way. Lehman did extensive research on Goddard and interviewed a long list of people who knew him or his work. Reflecting Lehman’s background as a journalist, perhaps, he relied more heavily on taped interviews than on documentary evidence, but he also consulted “Goddard’s notebooks, letters,journals, scrapbooks, and memorabilia” loaned by his widow Esther C. Goddard and others.4 Lehman juxtaposes Goddard’s personal and professional lives in ways...