100 Years Later, Where is Robert Goddard's First Liquid-Fuel Rocket?
Freeman writes:
It flew for only two seconds, but its impact is still felt a century later.
Robert Goddard's first liquid-fueled rocket, which lifted off from a snowy field on March 16, 1926, has been written about extensively. Earlier solid-fueled rockets existed, but liquid-fueled rockets promised the sustainability and control needed to send spacecraft and humans into Earth orbit and beyond.
"The rocket's reach was short, but it marked the moment that humanity entered a new era," said Kevin Schindler, author of "Robert Goddard's Massachusetts,"
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Photos from that day exist through the efforts of Goddard's wife, as does a monument stand from where the rocket, nicknamed "Nell," left the ground (today, located on a golf course). Over the decades, replicas of Nell have been built, even ones capable of flight. But a century later, a question about the rocket remains.Where is it now?
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Goddard wrote in his notebook that the rocket "rose 41 feet & went 184 feet, in 2.5 secs." The next day, he added, "Even though the release was pulled, the rocket did not rise at first, but the flame came out, and there was a steady roar. After a number of seconds it rose, slowly until it cleared the frame, and then at express train speed, curving over to the left, and striking the ice and snow, still going at a rapid rate.""It looked almost magical as it rose, without any appreciably greater noise or flame, as if it said, 'I've been here long enough; I think I'll be going somewhere else, if you don't mind,'" he wrote.
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Esther took a photograph of her husband standing with the recovered parts. She also posed for a similar photo, together with Sachs and Roope. In his notebook, Goddard wrote that they brought the rocket's remains back to his laboratory.By all accounts, Goddard did not try to reassemble Nell, nor did he treat the pieces as historic artifacts.
"He didn't preserve it as a sacred object," wrote Michael Neufeld, who retired as a senior curator for the space history division of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, in an email. "He didn't have a lot of money at that point and reused everything."
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The National Air and Space Museum's collection catalog describes the Goddard May 1926 rocket as "likely includ[ing] the nozzle" recovered from Nell."I gather the nozzle assertion is based on his notes. I haven't seen them myself," said Neufeld. "More may be on the May 1926 rocket, which we can't prove."
Goddard's notebook is held at the Robert H. Goddard Library at Clark University today. In his March 16, 1926, entry, Goddard recorded that "the lower half of the nozzle burned off." Photos taken prior to Nell's launch show a longer nozzle than what is installed on the May rocket, perhaps supporting its suggested reuse.
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As referenced by both Winter and Brooks, W.S. Crane researched and published a catalog for the museum's Goddard holdings in 1994. The chamber is attributed to coming from Clark University and the nozzle fragments are described as a gift from Esther Goddard. The source of the nose cone is unknown.The museum also has the rod, rollers, and wire that were used to ignite Nell. "Pulling the wire opened a hole in the bottom of the liquid oxygen tank, where the oxygen dripped onto a heated surface," Crane wrote, adding that the assembly was also a gift from Mrs. Goddard.
"We are a few years out from a full recovery," wrote Brooks in an email, "The Goddard collection will return in a contemporary and updated presentation (compared to the original exhibit, which dated back to 1959) when the museum reopens."
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"Apart from its historic significance, this rocket became a minor source of embarrassment for Dr. Goddard, since the illogical position of the combustion chamber at the top is evidence that he had failed to consider some very basic physics in his design," wrote Crane. "This is a great example of the role of common sense and intuition in pioneering engineering, and one of the very few times that Dr. Goddard's failed him."
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