Early Tracking and Communication Facilities at Goddard
Space Flight Center
Named for American rocketry pioneer Dr. Robert H. Goddard, NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center was established on May 1, 1959, as NASA's first space flight
complex.
In the 1960s, when this image was taken, Goddard focused on the development
of tracking and communication facilities and capabilities for both the
scientific satellites and the manned space flight program. Goddard became the
hub of the massive, international tracking and communications network that
involved aircraft, supertankers converted into mobile communications units, and
a wide diversity of ground stations. A duplicate mission control center was also
built at Goddard in case the computers at the main control room at the Johnson
Space Center in Houston, Texas failed for any reason.
Image Credit: NASA
Dr. Robert H. Goddard, American Rocketry Pioneer
It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of
yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.
-- Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard
Colorized image of Dr. Goddard at a Clark
University chalkboard in 1924.
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Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard
is considered the father of modern rocket propulsion. A physicist of great
insight, Goddard also had a unique genius for invention. It is in memory of this
brilliant scientist that NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.,
was established on May 1, 1959.
By 1926, Goddard had constructed and successfully tested the first rocket
using liquid fuel. Indeed, the flight of Goddard’s rocket on March 16, 1926, at
Auburn, Mass., was as significant to history as that of the Wright brothers at
Kitty Hawk.
Primitive in their day as the achievement of the Wrights, Goddard’s rockets
made little impression on government officials. Only through modest subsidies
from the Smithsonian Institution and the Daniel Guggenheim Foundation, as well
as the leaves of absence granted him by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute of
Clark University, was Goddard able to sustain his lifetime of devoted research
and testing.
Goddard first obtained public notice in 1907 in a cloud of smoke from a
powder rocket fired in the basement of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute
physics building. School officials took an immediate interest in the work of
student Goddard. The school’s administration, to their credit, did not expel
him. He thus began his lifetime of dedicated work.
In 1914, Goddard received two U.S. patents. One was for a rocket using liquid
fuel. The other was for a two- or three-stage rocket using solid fuel.
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Dr. Goddard's Major Contributions Robert Goddard's contributions to missilery and space flight would make a lengthy list. Below are some highlights.
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At his own expense, he began to make systematic studies about propulsion
provided by various types of gunpowder. His classic document was a study he
wrote in 1916 requesting funds from the Smithsonian Institution so that he could
continue his research. This was later published along with his subsequent
research and Navy work in a Smithsonian Miscellaneous Publication No. 2540
(January 1920). It was entitled “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes.” In
this treatise, Goddard detailed his search for methods of raising
weather-recording instruments higher than sounding balloons. In this search, he
developed the mathematical theories of rocket propulsion.
Toward the end of his 1920 report, Goddard outlined the possibility of a
rocket reaching the moon and exploding a load of flash powder there to mark its
arrival. The bulk of his scientific report to the Smithsonian was a dry
explanation of how he used the $5,000 grant in his research. The press picked up
Goddard’s scientific proposal about a rocket flight to the moon, however, and
created a journalistic controversy concerning the feasibility of such a thing.
The resulting ridicule created in Goddard firm convictions about the nature of
the press corps, which he held for the rest of his life.
Goddard’s greatest engineering contributions were made during his work in the
1920s and 1930s. He received a total of $10,000 from the Smithsonian by 1927,
and through the personal efforts of Charles A. Lindbergh, he subsequently
received financial support from the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation.
Progress on all of his work, titled “Liquid Propellant Rocket Development,” was
published by the Smithsonian in 1936.
Goddard’s work largely anticipated in technical detail the later German V-2
missiles, including gyroscopic control, steering by means of vanes in the jet
stream of the rocket motor, gimbal-steering, power-driven fuel pumps and other
devices. His rocket flight in 1929 carried the first scientific payload, a
barometer, and a camera. Goddard developed and demonstrated the basic idea of
the “bazooka” two days before the Armistice in 1918 at the Aberdeen Proving
Ground in Maryland. His launching platform was a music rack. In World War II,
Goddard again offered his services and was assigned by the U.S. Navy to the
development of practical jet assisted takeoff and liquid propellant rocket
motors capable of variable thrust. In both areas, he was successful. Robert H.
Goddard died on Aug. 10, 1945, four days after the first atomic bomb was dropped
on Japan.
Goddard was the first scientist who not only realized the potentialities of
missiles and space flight but also contributed directly in bringing them to
practical realization. Goddard had a rare talent in both creative science and
practical engineering. The dedicated labors of this modest man went largely
unrecognized in the United States until the dawn of what is now called the
“space age.” High honors and wide acclaim, belated but richly deserved, now come
to the name of Robert H. Goddard.
On Sept. 16, 1959, the 86th Congress authorized the issuance of a gold medal
in the honor of professor Robert H. Goddard.
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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