On the morning of March 16, 1926, Robert Hutchings Goddard (1882–1945), a Professor of Physics at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and his assistant Henry Sachs arrived at an isolated farm in nearby Auburn, Massachusetts. The farm, known locally for its fine strawberries, was owned by Effie Ward, Goddard’s distant relative. For much of the previous decade “Aunt” Effie had consented to his often clamorous rocket experiments performed there, and allowed him to store his equipment in an unused henhouse. Her pet name for Goddard was “the rocket man” (Lehman 130).
The day was clear and cold, the ground covered by several inches of recently-fallen snow. Bundled against the weather, the two men lugged wooden crates of cylindrical tanks, valves, lines, and hoses to a secluded tree grove and proceeded to assemble the parts of their experiment and the free-standing metal frame that held it in place. The resulting, vaguely pyramidal, structure stood about eleven feet tall. To a twenty-first century spectator it looks more like a dangerous jungle gym or a rickety garment rack than one of the most important devices in the history of aeronautics.
(Image source: Esther C. Goddard, courtesy of Clark University)
By 1926, Goddard’s preeminence in rocket science had been well established. His 1919 monograph A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes was recognized as a breakthrough in the theory and design of rockets and an ambitious program for their uses in atmospheric research and spaceflight. (Among other novel ideas, the report included one of the first mathematical proofs that rockets would work in the vacuum of space, widely disbelieved at the time, and a plan to crash an uncrewed explosive payload on the Moon’s surface so that earth-based astronomers might observe the effects of the impact.1 His early patents on “rocket apparatus,” which included designs for multi-stage rockets, the use of propelling nozzles to increase exhaust velocities, and liquid fuel systems, had redefined basic principles of modern rocket design.2 His widely published speculations on the suitability of rockets for uncrewed and crewed exploration beyond Earth’s atmosphere were dismissed by other scientists but were popular with the lay public.
He was, in short, a man ahead of his time. The late 1920s would mark the beginning of the golden age of science fiction, chock-a-block with stories of space rockets and valiant men and women traveling aboard them to other worlds. The first issue of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories, the earliest of the great sf pulp magazines, was published only two weeks after the events on Effie’s farm. The August 1928 issue of the magazine would include Philip Francis Nowlan’s novella Armageddon – 2419 AD, which introduced readers to the archetypal American spacefarer Buck Rogers. Four months later, United Features’ newspaper comic Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. began its syndicated run. In the strip, which continued until 1967, Buck’s close friend Dr. Huer, the balding, mustachioed inventor of the “non-recoil energy” used to propel Buck’s spaceship, was plainly based on Goddard (Clary 166). The successes of his experiments were often credited as the inspiration for the proliferating amateur rocket clubs in the US and Europe during the interwar period (Gainor 50–52). Far more than fellow rocket visionaries Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935, Russia), Robert Esnault-Pelterie (1881–1957, France), and Hermann Oberth (1894–1989, Germany), Goddard was on his way to becoming a household name.
The March 1926 experiment was the culmination of nearly a decade of determined efforts by Goddard’s team at Clark University to realize the ambitions of his 1914 patent on the use of liquid fuel systems for rocket propulsion. Goddard’s early work on the design of solid fuel rockets had substantially improved their reliability and efficiency. But he had become convinced that liquid propellants offered superior power and control, due to their higher specific impulse – a measure of the ratio of change in momentum to the mass of the fuel – and their ability to throttle the flow of propellant into the rocket’s combustion chamber, allowing for more precise management of thrust.
Though its design only slightly resembles what we today might think a proper “rocket” should look like, the individual features of “Nell” – the familiar name Goddard and his team used for all their rockets after 1929 and retroactively applied to the earlier models (Clary 182, Lehman 7) – are recognizable. Unlike contemporary rockets, the motor is at the top, in a “tractor” configuration – meaning that the motor pulls the rocket rather than pushes it – that Goddard believed would result in a more stable ascent. (He would later determine that the position of the motor makes little difference so long as the rocket forms a straight axis.) The two propellant tanks, containing gasoline and liquid oxygen (LOX) respectively, are below the motor and attached to it by rigid fuel lines that help support the motor and convey the propellants to its combustion chamber. The tanks are protected from the heat of the motor’s exhaust by a shield mounted above the LOX tank. Below the gasoline tank a “starting hose” leads away from the rocket, connected to a tank of pressurized oxygen used to boost the vapor pressure in the fuel tanks and the fuel lines.
(Image source: Pendray 1945)
About 1 PM, soon after Goddard and Sachs had finished assembling the rocket and mounting it in the launching frame, Goddard’s spouse Esther Christine Goddard (née Kisk, 1901–1982) and Percy Roope, Assistant Professor of Physics at Clark, arrived at the site. Esther took several photographs of the participants and, famously, of Goddard standing by Nell, his right hand grasping the launching frame.
About 2:30 PM, the gasoline and oxygen were poured into their respective tanks, which were then sealed. The rocket’s igniter, a clump of match heads, and a small alcohol lamp beneath the LOX tank, which served to vaporize some of the LOX and thus prime the fuel lines, were lit by Sachs, who then stepped behind the shelter of a wooden door propped up near to the rocket. Also behind the door, Goddard opened the valve on the starting hose tank, boosting pressure in the fuel lines. A sharp popping sound was heard from the motor nozzle, followed by a whitish burst of flame and an audible if muted “roar.”
Esther, standing at a distance of what appears to have been several dozen yards, had been at the ready to capture the launch on film with a small, hand-cranked movie camera, but an unexpected delay at the start of the rocket’s ascent was longer than the camera’s seven second capacity. Goddard’s March 16 diary entry on the launch is brief and cryptic, but his entry the following day captures the mix of technical observation and poetic reverie that surely was felt by the eye-witnesses to the launch:
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.” Esther said that it looked like a fairy or an aesthetic dancer, as it started off. The sky was clear, for the most part, with large shadowy white clouds, but late in the afternoon there was a large pink cloud in the west, over which the sun shone. Some of the surprising things were the absence of smoke, the lack of very loud roar, and the smallness of the flame.3
During her maiden flight Nell had flown 41 feet (12.5 meters) into the air and landed 184 feet (56 meters) away from the launching frame, coming to rest in a cabbage patch. The duration of the flight was 2.5 seconds.4
At a remove of 100 years this first, brief flight of a new kind of rocket may not seem like all that much given, for example, the dizzying, gargantuan power of the liquid-fueled Saturn V launch vehicle that lifted nine crewed flights to the Moon, or the liquid-fueled SLS (Space Launch System) that will soon lift the crew of Artemis II, returning humans to the Moon’s vicinity for the first time in over half a century. Nell’s March 1926 thrust is estimated to have been about 9 pounds of force (4 × 10^-5 meganewtons). The thrust capacity of the Saturn V is 7.6 million lbf (34.5 MN), and the thrust capacity of the SLS’s four RS-25 engines is 8.8 million lbf (39.1 MN). Such comparisons obscure the essential priority of invention: the second and third, and others that came between and will come after them, are not possible without the first.
In 1966, the Goddard Rocket Launching Site was designated a US National Historic Landmark. Located on the grounds of Auburn’s Pakachoag Golf Course, midway between the tee and green on the ninth fairway, it is marked by a four foot (1.2 meters) tall granite obelisk with the inscription, “Site of launching of world’s first liquid propellant rocket by Dr. Robert H. Goddard. 16 March 1926.” The site is accessible to the public during the course’s regular operating hours. Visitors are advised to keep an eye out for falling golf balls.
Coda: Florida Rocket Lab’s “Sparrow”
Sparrow V1, designed by the undergrad students of UF’s Florida Rocket Lab, is the University’s first student-built liquid bipropellant rocket engine, producing 550 lbf of thrust using isopropyl alcohol / nitrous oxide (IPA / N2O) as its fuel sources. See the FRL website, https://floridarocketlab.org/, for more information about the Lab, its members, and mission.
As I write this in March 2026, the FRL’s rocket Mirage, the first liquid-fueled rocket in UF history, has been accepted to the 2025–26 FAR-OUT (https://www.faroutlaunch.org/ ) launch competition in the 3,000–15,000 foot liquid propellant category. The competition will be held from May 27 to June 1, 2026. Go Gators!
– Terry Harpold, Assistant Director, Astraeus Space Institute
Selected Bibliography
Clary, D.A. (2003). Rocket Man: Robert H. Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age. Hyperion.
Gainor, C. (2008). To A Distant Day: The Rocket Pioneers. University of Nebraska Press.
Lehman, M. (1963). This High Man: The Life of Robert H. Goddard. Farrar, Straus and Company.
Pendray, G.E. (1945). The Coming Age of Rocket Power. Harper & Brothers.
Sutton, G.P. (2006). History of Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Notes
- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had proven that rockets work in a vacuum as early as 1898 but his research was little known outside of a small circle of Russian colleagues. ↩︎
- A prolific inventor fiercely protective of his intellectual property, at the end of his life Goddard would hold 214 US patents, many of them related to his rocket research. ↩︎
- “Worcester, March 16–17, 1926,” R.H. Goddard’s Diary, v. 2, 1925–1930. Robert H. Goddard Papers, Clark University. ↩︎
- The first piloted flight of the Wright Brothers’ Flyer on December 17, 1903, traversed 120 feet (37 meters) of terrain at a height of 10 feet (3 meters) and lasted 12 seconds. Goddard was not reluctant to make this comparison (Clary 122). ↩︎