In 1926, Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fuel rocket from a snowy Massachusetts field; 35 years later, NASA formally dedicated Goddard Space Flight Center

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum accounts described an event on March 16, 1926, that changed history in an unprecedented way: the launch of the first liquid-propellant rocket, pioneered by Robert H. Goddard, that took place without livestreams, countdowns, confetti cannons, headlines in newspapers, or a single mention in the media. The launch simply took place on a neighbouring farm near Worcester, Massachusetts, with only a physics professor, his wife, two assistants, and a rocket standing in the snow.

The rocket flew for 2.5 seconds, rose 41 feet, and landed 184 feet away in the snow, where it crashed on impact. At that time, however, this event took place quietly, and virtually no one paid attention to it. And that’s pretty much the whole point.

A DIY project that quietly rewrote spaceflight


The rocket developed by Robert Goddard, a physics professor at Clark University experimenting with liquid oxygen and gasoline in a machine shop, was based on an idea that Goddard’s colleagues found unrealistic. The Nell rocket, which is how this contraption got its name, was an ungainly apparatus ten feet tall, with an engine on top and a fuel tank below: a configuration Goddard believed would improve stability, but one he abandoned after this flight, relocating the engine beneath the propellant tanks in his subsequent rockets, the arrangement standard in rocketry today. This device weighed roughly ten pounds fully loaded. It's less than a bowling ball, but it became the precursor of all liquid-fueled rockets launched ever since, including the ones currently carrying astronauts to the International Space Station.

The media dragged him, and then had to eat it

Just six years prior to its launch, in 1920, the editors at The New York Times wrote an editorial ridiculing Goddard’s published theory about rocket function in a vacuum, saying that he did not even know the fundamentals of physics taught in high schools. However, it turns out he was right. It took until July 17, 1969, the day after the Apollo 11 launch atop a liquid-fueled Saturn V, for The New York Times to publish its dryly worded correction about Newton’s third law applying in vacuum, according to a 2008 Smithsonian Magazine report on the whole episode. Forty-nine years is a pretty long time to be wrong about something so basic. Good to remember that institutional arrogance and institutional accuracy are not necessarily the same things.

That same Smithsonian Magazine report notes that Goddard’s 1920 treatise was a dry, mathematical argument about multi-stage, unmanned rockets, not a claim of imminent moon travel. In fact, just 1,750 copies were printed, and the Smithsonian’s press release helped trigger the frenzy by pushing major papers to treat a theoretical exercise as if it were a prediction.

Getting his name on the building, 35 years later

However, the death of Goddard in 1945 came at a time when rockets had not yet caught up with his discoveries. However, the United States space program did not overlook him either; indeed, NASA's first space flight center that was constructed in Greenbelt, Maryland and initially referred to as the Beltsville Space Center was christened Goddard Space Flight Center on May 1, 1959, while its formal dedication occurred on March 16, 1961, precisely thirty-five years from the date of the launch.

Why this still tracks

Goddard’s story seems to hit home because his story was not about making headlines. He documented everything in his journal, patented his work, and continued to test even when the leading newspaper in America deemed him uneducated on the matter. The point of his story is not that being ridiculed will get you the right answer; there are many misguided people who are being ridiculed for a reason. The point is that ideas can move from being dismissed to being widely accepted over time.