By Edward Ellegood
Aerospace Industry Analyst
Merrick & Company
Dr. Robert H. Goddard and a liquid oxygen-gasoline rocket in the frame from which it was fired on March 16, 1926, at Auburn, Massachusetts. From 1930 to 1941, Dr. Goddard made substantial progress in the development of progressively larger rockets, which attained altitudes of 2400 meters, and refined his equipment for guidance and control, his techniques of welding, and his insulation, pumps and other associated equipment. In many respects, Dr. Goddard laid the essential foundations of practical rocket technology. He is considered one of the fathers of rocketry along with Konstantin Tsiolovsky (1857-1935) and Hermann Oberth (1894-1989).
Photo: https://www.nasa.gov/dr-robert-h-goddard-american-rocketry-pioneer/
Harry Guggenheim, Robert Goddard,
and Charles Lindbergh.
Before coastlines and deserts became synonymous with rocketry, and long before the FAA began to worry about airspace interference, serial inventor Robert Goddard was launching the world’s first liquid-fueled rockets from the Asa Wood Farm in Auburn, Massachusetts, just outside Worcester. “Crazy Bob”, who had invented the bazooka in 1917, quietly launched eight of his new rockets from the site.
The first launch, 100 years ago on March 16, 1926, reached an altitude of 41 feet. His eighth rocket, launched from the farm on July 17, 1929, reached 90 feet and was the first to carry payloads (a barometer, a thermometer, and a camera). But the noise from these launches, the rockets’ falling on other private properties downrange, and their tendency to cause grass fires, brought public complaints and the attention of George Neal, the state’s fire marshal.
Neal ordered Goddard to halt operations at the farm, bringing an end to what could have become the world’s first spaceport. With funding secured from the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics (secured with support from Charles Lindbergh), Goddard moved his rocket development and launch operations to New Mexico in 1930.
Dr. Robert Goddard’s staff and vehicles (Ford truck, trailer, and Dodge touring car) ready to start on a day of repairing the launching tower, September 1934.
Dr. Goddard’s high hopes for liquid-fueled rockets were born of his prior work on solid-fuel launchers during World War I (leading to the bazooka) at sites in California and Maryland. All eight of his farm-launched rockets used gasoline and liquid oxygen (sourced from nearby Worcester and produced primarily for welding and medical applications).
Today, the site of Goddard’s historic launches is situated between the tee and the green of the ninth hole of the Pakachoag Golf Course. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966.
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Merrick & Company is an employee-owned engineering, architecture, surveying, and geospatial firm, headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado. Sears Merrick, a former engineering professor at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, founded our company in 1955 in Denver. Our initial focus on structural engineering quickly expanded into power engineering, surveying and other types of engineering across Colorado.
