[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3392-3393]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                           DR. ROBERT GODDARD

 Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, today I would like to recognize 
the contributions of a man who helped pave the way for the American 
space flight program. Seventy-five years ago, on a cool morning in 
Auburn, MA, Dr. Goddard and his small group of students and assistants 
huddled around a nine-pound, awkward looking structure and began the 
first of many, now familiar countdowns. Seconds later the small vehicle 
rose forty-one feet into the air and fell to the ground amid the cheers 
of those below. The age of modern rocketry was begun. Today, Doctor 
Goddard is recognized around the world as the father of modern rocket 
propulsion.
  Goddard's dreams began, like thousands of other young children, with

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stories from his childhood. He was born in 1882, in Worcester, MA, as 
the only child of a bookkeeper. In 1899, at age 17, young Robert dozed 
off in a cherry tree after having read H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. 
He dreamt he had ascended to Mars in a machine driven by centrifugal 
force. When he awoke he devoted his life to making his dream of 
spaceflight a reality.
  His aspiration of devising a system for propelling men away from the 
Earth led him to pursue an education in physics. In 1908, he earned his 
Bachelor's of Science degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He 
went on to receive his Master's in Physics from Clark University in 
1910 and his doctorate in 1911. His early efforts in rocket propulsion 
mathematically explored various ideas including solar power, electric 
ion propulsion, and explosive firing from a large cannon as narrated in 
Jules Verne's classic 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon. His work 
eventually rejected all of these ideas as for lack of efficiency or 
power.
  In 1914, Doctor Goddard patented a system for using liquid propellant 
to lift rockets into the cosmos. That same year he also received a 
patent for a multiple stage system. Goddard devoted his life to the 
ideas and concepts of rocket propulsion that he first demonstrated in 
1926. Forty-three years later these two patents were put into practice 
to propel Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts to their historic 
moon landing in 1969.
  From 1920 to 1929 his work was sponsored primarily by the Smithsonian 
Institution. During this period, Goddard wrote four unsolicited reports 
in which he revealed his visions of space exploration. He foretold of 
manned vehicles exploring the moon and the planets, solar power, ion 
propulsion, and even journeys to other star systems. Goddard requested 
that these reports be kept confidential because these lofty concepts 
were completely unacceptable to the scientific community of the 1920s. 
In 1932, in a letter to H.G. Wells, Goddard wrote, ``[A]iming at the 
stars, both literally and figuratively, is a problem to occupy 
generations, so that no matter how much progress one makes, there is 
always the thrill of just beginning. . . .'' His visionary ideas were 
the spark that ignited the passions of hundreds of young men and women 
to transform his idealistic dreams into reality.
  But he wasn't just a dreamer. His practical solutions led to 214 
total patents. In the early 1920s, Goddard began a series of rocket 
tests of which the 1926 launch was the hallmark. One of the key 
theories proven by Goddard's experimentation was that a rocket will 
function in the vacuum of space. Before Goddard's meticulous tests, it 
was widely believed in the scientific community that rockets moved by 
pushing against the air. Goddard proved that rockets functioned on the 
reaction principle and that they would perform in a vacuum. On this 
foundation, the path was laid for scientists and engineers to build on 
Doctor Goddard's work and lead the United States to the forefront of 
the space race.
  At his namesake, the Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, MD, 
the tremendous NASA scientists and engineers recently celebrated forty 
years of continuing Dr. Goddard's legacy of discovery and exploration. 
So, on this day, we should remember the efforts of this courageous 
visionary and his successors as the finest example of American 
perseverance and ingenuity. Without Robert Goddard's enterprise, our 
race to the stars would have faltered. His historic launch is truly one 
of the great mileposts on the road to the modern space age.

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