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Goddard's liquid-fuel rocket
March 16, 1926· Invention or discovery· Transport & space
Well documentedSolid records, physical evidence or scientific consensus.
Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket from a farm in Auburn, Massachusetts, on March 16, 1926.
See it on the Technology & Medicine map →How it works
Goddard, a physics professor at Clark University, burned gasoline with liquid oxygen, which gives more push per pound than gunpowder and can be throttled. The first flight lasted about 2.5 seconds, rose some 41 feet (12.5 m) and landed 184 feet away. With Guggenheim money, arranged with Charles Lindbergh's help, he moved to Roswell, New Mexico, in 1930 and added gyroscope steering and fuel pumps. He received 214 patents, many after his death.
Why it mattered
It proved liquid-fuel rockets worked, the basic design behind the V-2, the Moon rockets and today's launch vehicles.
How we know
Goddard's diaries, photos and papers survive, including his 1919 Smithsonian report on reaching extreme altitudes. The New York Times mocked him in 1920 and apologized in July 1969.
Still unknown or debated
How much Goddard's secrecy, sharing few results and working mostly alone, limited his influence on American rocketry is still debated.
Connections (2)
▸Gunpowder propelled China's first rockets, ancestors of Goddard's liquid-fuel rocketMostly agreed
The connection
Chinese engineers packed gunpowder into tubes to make rockets by about the 1200s. The idea spread via the Mongols to the Islamic world, India and Europe, where Congreve's war rockets appeared in 1804. Goddard kept the rocket principle, thrust from gas jetting out the back, but swapped solid powder for more powerful liquid fuels.
When and how
Jin and Song China, 1200s, in wars against the Mongols; Mysore, India, 1780s–90s; Goddard's own powder-rocket tests in Massachusetts in the 1910s.
How sure are we?
Chinese military texts and accounts of sieges such as Kaifeng (1232) describe fire weapons; Goddard's notes show he tested powder rockets before turning to liquid fuel.
Debates and open questions
When true rockets, rather than arrows carrying burning powder, first appeared in China is unclear, because Chinese terms such as 'fire arrow' are ambiguous.
▸Goddard's liquid-fuel rocket pioneered the liquid fuel used by the V-2 rocketWell documented
The connection
Goddard proved that rockets could burn liquid fuel with liquid oxygen, use turbine-driven pumps, and steer with gyroscopes and vanes in the exhaust. The V-2 used the same ingredients at far larger scale: alcohol and liquid oxygen fed by turbopumps, gyroscope guidance and graphite exhaust vanes.
When and how
Goddard in Massachusetts and Roswell, New Mexico, 1926–41; von Braun's team at Kummersdorf and Peenemünde, Germany, 1932–44.
How we know
Patents and engineering records show similar solutions; after examining captured V-2 parts in 1945, Goddard reportedly said it looked like his work.
Debates and open questions
Whether the Germans copied Goddard or reached similar answers on their own is debated; von Braun praised Goddard, but Hermann Oberth's books shaped German rocketry more.