The man who proved rockets could reach space was mocked in his time

As he sat in the tree, he recalled later in his diary, Goddard imagined a spacecraft capable of flying to Mars spiraling away into the sky. He theorized in 1908 that only liquid fuels could create the massive amount of thrust needed to get a rocket into space, then spent years both laying out the physics of rocketry and experimenting on real-world ways to put his theories into action. Media coverage focused on the theoretical future applications of the work, mocking Goddard’s proposal that a rocket might one day reach the moon as “a severe strain on credulity” and jokily speculating that giant rockets could be the Atlantic liners of the future.

Author: @NatGeo

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