re: #154 ObserverArt

Since rockets are being talked about, it should be mentioned that the father of liquid fueled rocketry was American Robert H. Goddard. He led a very interesting life and wasn’t really as accepted for what he did as he should have been.

I’m not sure how true it is, but I was always told the German rockets were developed off of Goddard’s experiments and writings.

If you want some good science reading study Goddard.

According to his autobiography, Von Braun honestly believed at the time of his capture that the US was ahead of him in rocketry, thanks to Goddard. He reasoned that the only reason the allies had not deployed something like the V-2 was that allied air superiority made it pointless. At one point he told his interrogators “I thought Goddard would have told you all about it.” He was amazed to learn that the visionary American had been put to work in an obscure post developing take-off assist rockets for the Navy.
Among other things, Goddard perfected vectored-nozzle steering before the war and actually flew rockets with this innovation. Von Braun did not use nozzle vectoring until he had been in the US for several years. His German (and first American) rockets, including the A-4 (“V-2), used a crude system of graphite vanes impinging on the exhaust to provide thrust vectoring, a system that robbed the rocket of up to 17% of its thrust.