Goddard Rocket Launching Site Monument

This small monument on the Pakachoag Golf Course is about 100 yards north of the site where Dr. Robert Goddard fired the first liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926. At that time, the launch site was part of the backyard of his Aunt Effie’s farm on Pakachoag Hill. Before Dr. Robert Goddard’s invention of the liquid propellant rocket, the only rockets in existence were solid propellant rockets which were used for fireworks and military exhibitions. After the liquid propellant rocket was invented, rockets could be used for space flight and intercontinental warfare, as well as fireworks and military exhibitions. At the time, the United States Army needed a rocket to end World War I. Dr. Robert Goddard built the United States Army a rocket, and it was successfully used. Dr. Robert Goddard’s base in Roswell, New Mexico was the inspiration for Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Robert Goddard was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on October 5, 1882. Robert Goddard’s parents were Nahum Goddard, and Fannie Louise Hoyt. The next year when Robert was one year old, the family moved to Boston, Massachusetts. Robert Goddard was not a prodigy. However, he had thoughts about his future at the age of seven. This is when he started thinking about space travel. Nine years later, Robert Goddard and his family moved back home to Worcester, specifically a house on Maple Hill. They were forced to move back to Worcester because of Fannie’s health. She had throat cancer. Throat cancer later caused her death. One day in the next fall, Robert Goddard climbed an apple tree in his backyard, and had a vision of rockets blasting off into space. This is what sparked his interest in space travel. Robert Goddard started keeping notebooks of his ideas about how to make space travel possible. This development is an early precursor to his work in developing rockets. It is similar to how Isaac Newton discovered gravity when he fell out of an apple tree. Starting in the fall of 1900, Robert Goddard went to classes at a prep school called Becker Business College. He made it through two semesters there until he became diagnosed with tuberculosis. This disease kept him from school from the spring of 1900 to the spring of 1901.

         At the age of 19, Robert Goddard started high school at South High School in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was enrolled there from 1901 to 1904. In 1904, when Robert Goddard graduated, he graduated as the valedictorian. Then, Robert Goddard was accepted to Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). While he was at WPI, he was considered to be a “shark” for knowledge. As well as being studious, Robert Goddard was also in many clubs and committees, including being a member of the WPI Glee Club, the founder and president of the WPI Chemical Club, the editor-in-chief of his class newspaper, and a member of a fraternity called Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Robert Goddard also held many positions in his class’ committee. For relaxation during college, he wrote treatises on academic subjects. At the end of his senior year in 1908, Robert Goddard earned a B.S. in General Science. At graduation, Robert Goddard was one of only three members of his class who had majored in General Science. Everyone else majored in specific areas of science, such as Engineering or Physics. After graduation, Robert Goddard got a job at his alma mater, WPI. He was an instructor of physics. At the same time, he was a special student in physics at Clark University. Being a special student is similar to attending graduate school. He worked at WPI from 1908 to 1909 when he decided to devote all of his time to graduate school. He did not conclude with graduate school until 1911.

        Robert Goddard finished graduate school with two degrees, a M.A. in General Science which he earned in 1910 and a Ph.D. which he earned in 1911. After graduate school, Robert Goddard got a job at his other alma mater Clark University. Robert Goddard was a honorary fellow, which is an advanced type of teacher. He had three stints of being a teacher. The first stint was from 1911 to 1912. Over summer break, Robert Goddard spent the whole summer, as well as the next year, in the hospital with tuberculosis. The second stint was from 1914 to 1915. He again had a bout of tuberculosis that lasted three years. The third stint was from 1918 to 1920. When Robert Goddard was teaching at Clark University and spending time doing research in the hospital when he was stricken with tuberculosis, he was inspired by Magellan, the inventor and scientist Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier. Back in the middle of the 15^th century, Galileo proposed one theory that the Earth revolved around the sun. That was later proven to be true. In the 16^th century, Magellan confirmed that the Earth was round. In 1783 which is the 18^th century, Joseph-Michel Montgolfier invented the hot-air balloon. In 1912 when Robert Goddard was 30 years old, he first experimented with the idea of using rockets to reach high altitudes and escape velocity. This was preliminary research. Between 1912 and 1913, Robert Goddard tested rockets over Coes Pond in Worcester, Massachusetts. In December of 1913 when Robert Goddard was 31 years old, doctors gave him one week to live because of his tuberculosis. He exceeded this deadline by 31 years. From tuberculosis, Robert Goddard was bald in his early thirties.

         The year of 1914 was the year that Robert Goddard started his work on rockets. During this time, Robert Goddard was inspired by Isaac Newton, who discovered gravity. When World War I started in 1914, Robert Goddard was on to developing rockets. He received two patents for a model rocket. However, Robert Goddard did not know whether it would work with real rockets. In 1915, he figured this out by experimenting and proving that it would work. Towards the end of the war in January of 1917, the Smithsonian Institute asked Robert Goddard to make a rocket for the war. They gave him $5,000 to do so. Robert Goddard successfully created the first rocket, and it was used to end World War I. On November 10, 1918, Robert Goddard invented the rocket weapon called the bazooka. After these two inventions, he published a mathematical theory about rocket propulsion called “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes”. This earned Robert Goddard the unfortunate nickname of “moon man”.

         A couple of years later, Robert Goddard received employment as the part-time consultant on solid propellant rocket weapons for the United States government. Despite discovering that solid propellants are not effective and liquid propellants are more useful, Robert Goddard kept his job. As his goal in life was space travel, Robert Goddard was the first one to suggest travel to the moon. He made this suggestion during his time working for the United States government. He also suggested that other countries like the Soviet Union and Germany were going to develop rockets like us. Therefore, we should beat them to the invention, and have an arms race with them if necessary. These suggestions allowed his job to be a little more than part-time. It lasted from 1920 to 1923. That same year in 1920, Robert Goddard improved his rocket design, and invented the first liquid-fueled rocket.

         After Robert Goddard’s career working for the United States government ended, he got a job as a professor at Clark University. This job lasted from 1920 to 1943. In 1921, Robert Goddard met his future wife named Esther Kisk while she was a student at Clark University. In 1923, the dean at Clark University recognized Robert Goddard’s potential, and promoted him to two new roles; director of physical laboratories, and chair of the physics department. In 1924, Robert Goddard and Esther Kisk got married.

         On March 16, 1926, Robert Goddard finally succeeded at launching the first liquid-fueled rocket. Robert Goddard launched it on his Aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn, MA. Years later, Aunt Effie’s farm was sold to another owner who built Asa Ward farm in its place. Asa Ward farm is today the location of Pakachoag Golf Course, named after the Pakachoag Indians. There is a plaque on the golf course commemorating the exact spot where Robert Goddard launched his rocket. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966. The liquid-fueled rocket flew 184 feet in 2 ½ seconds. The launch of the first liquid-fueled rocket prompted the later scientific event known as the Space Age. In terms of inventions, Robert Goddard’s liquid-fueled rocket is equal to the Wright Brothers’ invention of the airplane. In January of 1929, Charles Lindbergh had an idea to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. He wanted to consult with Robert Goddard first. So, on November 23, 1929, Robert Goddard had his first of many meetings with Charles Lindbergh. It went well. Clark University was generous to Robert Goddard to the extent where they would grant him a leave of absence to do research whenever he requested one. They would even grant him leaves of absences that would be months-long. On July 10, 1930, Robert and Esther Goddard moved to Roswell, New Mexico to further his research. A few months later on December 30 of that year, Robert Goddard conducted his first test at Roswell. It was successful. It was a mini-Cape Canaveral. The rocket rose 2,000 feet and went 500 miles per hour. Despite this success, Robert Goddard was having a hard time controlling the direction of the rocket. A gyroscopic stabilizer would help with this. In 1935, Robert Goddard invented the gyroscopic stabilizer. That same year, Robert Goddard launched what he thought was just an ordinary rocket. It turned out that this rocket was the first one to fly faster than the speed of sound. From 1942 to 1945, Robert Goddard held three jobs. One of them was the director of research for the U.S. Navy in the Bureau of Aeronautics in both Roswell, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland. The second one was a consulting engineer at the Curtiss-Wright Corporation in Caldwell, New Jersey (1943 to 1945). The third one was the director at the American Rocket Association in Marion, Indianapolis (1944 to 1945).

         In 1944 when Germany was looking to end the war, Germany developed the V-2 rocket. It was the first rocket and ballistic missile to fly faster than the speed of sound, and simultaneously be used for scientific purposes rather than be kept in storage. The V-2 rocket was designed using Robert Goddard’s plans for a liquid-fueled rocket that German scientist Hermann Oberth found published online. Robert Goddard knew that this was a concern and had brought the idea of turning his rockets into missiles up to the United States army when he was working for them. If Robert Goddard did this, the Army could use the missiles to stop Germany. The Army turned down this proposal which was a setback for Robert Goddard’s work. Despite this, Goddard’s legacy remains the same. On June 2, 1945, after all of Robert Goddard’s hard work toward the field of rocketry, Clark University awarded him with a honorary doctorate degree. Two months later on August 10, Dr. Robert Goddard died of throat cancer, the same disease that killed his mother. A few days later on August 14, his body was laid to rest in Worcester, MA in Hope Cemetery at their family plot.

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