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 half(prenominal) and half on a local machine tools shop. In Boston, is where the girlish Robert Goddard spent his y forbiddenh as an scarcely nipper, and most of his younger historic period were spent alone at home due to his mothers illness with tuberculosis. Robert would not see his familys hometown of Worcester again until he was 17 in 1899. Much of his life 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 autumn of 1899, and by this magazine Robert had only completed his freshman year of high school. Although he was un adequate to(p) to travel by a lot of time within i nstitutional walls, the young Goddard was not without a strong yearning to learn--at least to learn science. Much of the time he spent sick at home sick was consumed nurture the Scientific American, or books from the library both science and science apologue novels-especially H.G. Wells War of the homos, a novel he would re-examine lots in subsequently years (Burrows, 32).Robert Goddard found happiness while doing his chores and practically used found this time for relaxing. Like many young xvii year olds, the time was spent daydreaming and this was the case on the nineteenth day of October 1899. Little did the young man know that this entry in his diary would change his entire life As I looked toward the palm in the east I imagined how wonderful it would be to make somewhat device which had even the possibility 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 sh aft, moving more rapidly above than below, could furnish lift by virtue of the greater centrifugal force at the top of the path. I was a assorted boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended, for existence at die hard 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 take exception for the United States (Yost, 144). Dr. Goddard is still revered and remembered as the Father of Modern Rocketry.whole kit and boodle CITEDBurrows, William. THIS NEW OCEAN THE STORY OF THE FIRSTSPACE AGE. New York haphazard House, 1998.Freeman, Marsha. HOW WE GOT TO THE MOON THE STORY OF THEGERMAN PIONEER. Wash DC 21st coulomb Science, 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, barb & Moser, Diane. SPACE EXPLORATION OPENINGTHE SPACE FRONTIER. New York Oxford, 1989.Stockton, William & Wilford, John. SPACELINER. New York Times, 1981.Time-Life Books. outward VOYAGE THROUGH THE UNIVERSE. Richmond Time-Life, 1989.Yost, Edna. MODERN AMERICANS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. guerrilla Ed., New York Dodd, Mead, 1962.