Scientists

Robert Goddard

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Read the following information and answer the questions below.

Robert Goddard is known as the father of modern rocketry. He became interested in space when he read H.G. Wells's science fiction classic The War of the Worlds when he was 16 years old. While climbing a cherry tree to cut off dead limbs, he imagined, as he later wrote, "how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet."

After receiving his B.S. degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1908, he was a Fellow in Physics at Clark University, receiving his A.M. in 1910 and his Ph.D. in 1911. By 1914, he was designing rocket motors, with financial assistance from the Smithsonian Institution. By 1919, he was writing about the possibilities of Moon flight.

Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926 at Auburn, Massachusetts. His journal entry of the event was notable for its laconic understatement: "The first flight with a rocket using liquid propellants was made yesterday at Aunt Effie's farm." The rocket, which was dubbed "Nell" and about the size of a human arm, rose just 41 feet during a 2.5-second flight that ended in a cabbage field, but it was an important demonstration that liquid-fuel propellants were possible.

Robert Goddard had many firsts in the field of Rocketry:

First explored mathematically the practicality of using rocket propulsion to reach high & altitudes and even the moon (1912)

First proved, by actual static test, that a rocket will work in a vacuum, that it needs no air to push against

First developed and shot a liquid fuel rocket, March 16,1926

First shot a scientific payload (barometer and camera) in a rocket flight (1929, Auburn, Massachusetts)

First used vanes in the rocket motor blast for guidance (1932, New Mexico)

First developed gyro control apparatus for rocket flight (1932, New Mexico)

First received U.S. patent in idea of multi-stage rocket (1914)

First developed pumps suitable for rocket fuels

First launched successfully a rocket with a motor pivoted on gimbals under the influence of a & gyro mechanism (1937)

1. The book _____ inspired Goddard about space travel.

Star Trek
War of the Worlds
Rocketship to the Moon
Metropolis

2. Goddard is known as the father of modern _____ .

space travel
science
rocketry
inventions

3. The first liquid fuel rocket was about the size of _____ .

a cherry tree
Aunt Effie
a broom
a human arm

4. The first liquid fuel rocket was named _____

Nell
Aunt Effie
Robert Jr.
The Spirit of Massachusetts

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