Goddard, Robert H.:

$2,500 · Offered by William Reese Company

LIQUID-PROPELLANT ROCKET DEVELOPMENT. First edition. Published as Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Volume 95, number 3 (Publication 3381). "Includes the first public mention of Goddard's historic 1926 liquid-fueled rocket launch" -Ciancone."Goddard worked out the theory of rocket propulsion independently...Having explored the mathematical practicality of rocketry since 1906 and the experimental workability of reaction engines in laboratory vacuum tests since 1912, Goddard began to accumulate ideas for probing beyond the Earth's stratosphere. His first two patents in 1914, for a liquid-fuel gun rocket and a multistage step rocket, let to some modest recognition and financial support from the Smithsonian Institution....With an eye toward patentability of demonstrated systems and with the aid of no more than a handful of technicians, Goddard achieved a series of workable liquid-fuel flights starting in 1926. Through the patronage of Charles A. Lindbergh, the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation, and the Carnegie and Smithsonian institutions, the Goddards and their small staff were able to move near Roswell, New Mexico. There, during most of the 1930s, Goddard demonstrated, despite many failures in his systematic static and flight tests, progressively more sophisticated experimental boosters and payloads, reaching speeds of 700 miles per hour and altitudes above 8000 feet in several test flights" - Dictionary of Scientific Biography.

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