00:00When Bob Goddard was 17, he wrote in his notebook that man would travel among the stars,
00:05and he specifically mentioned rockets as the proper transportation,
00:10but it was heresy to speak of space travel in 1899.
00:15You see, when Bob began his research in earnest in 1909,
00:20there was no technical information available on the subject of rocket propulsion,
00:25but by then young Goddard had dedicated his life to proving his conviction
00:28that the liquid-fuel rocket was practicable.
00:31Nobody was interested.
00:33A Ph.D. in 1911, he became a professor of physics at Clark University,
00:38but nobody was interested in his strange idea.
00:42Then World War I, the airplane was proving practicable as a weapon.
00:46Perhaps the rocket might.
00:47Dr. Goddard went to Washington.
00:49After much debate, representatives of the Signal Corps, the Air Corps, and Army Ordnance
00:53agreed to rendezvous at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds
00:55to witness a flight by the Goddard rocket.
00:58And the flight, in every way, was a success.
01:03And the Air Corps ordered further experimental trials immediately.
01:08But then came November 10, 1918, the very next day, armistice.
01:14So the war ended, and so did everybody's interest in rockets for 20 years.
01:19Everybody lost interest except Dr. Robert Goddard and Esther.
01:22Esther had been his secretary at Clark University.
01:24Later, she became official photographer for his experiments.
01:28In 1924, they were married.
01:29And during the years of deepest disappointment, when few noticed his work and when those who did merely smiled,
01:35Esther and Robert Goddard, leaning on one another, managed to plod relentlessly toward their goal.
01:40July 17, 1929, from a farm field in Auburn, Massachusetts,
01:43the Goddards prepared to launch a larger rocket than ever.
01:46With a mighty roar, the Goddard rocket took off into the heavens.
01:49It didn't quite reach that goal.
01:50In fact, it rose but 90 feet.
01:52The ruckus it created was considerable.
01:54A neighbor reported a plane had crashed, and fire engines raced from every direction toward the spot.
01:59Reporters hastened it to the scene, and Goddard was arrested for disturbing the peace.
02:03And the newspapers laughed uproariously at the mad scientist's efforts to shoot a hole in the moon.
02:09And the state fire marshal ruled that Goddard must never again fire a rocket in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
02:17But this is the rest of the story.
02:20You see, in 1919, when he had successfully demonstrated his rocket out of Aberdeen,
02:26all of the facts and specifications were duly and officially noted by the Smithsonian Institution.
02:31In fact, the original Goddard rocket is there today at the Smithsonian.
02:36And as is the custom with such scientific developments,
02:39the details are made available in pamphlet form through the government printing office.
02:44The rocket age, you have heard, was launched by the Germans with their B-1 and monstrous B-2.
02:50You heard that they pierced space for the first time.
02:53Well, that B-2 was built at Piena Munda, Germany.
02:56Scientists who came from Piena Munda to the United States after Hitler's defeat
03:00have been asked how they did it,
03:02and unanimously as they reflect upon the beginnings of their studies,
03:05they agree that they secured the necessary information
03:08from their military attache at the German embassy in Washington, D.C.
03:13The Germans got the jump on the world in rocketry
03:16and almost did us in using our generosity to build their super weapons
03:20because the German embassy had purchased all of the details
03:24in three pamphlets from the Smithsonian for 15 cents.
03:31And now you know the rest of the story.
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