GoKawiilIt flew for only two seconds, but its impact is still felt a century later.
Robert Goddard’s first liquid-fueled rocket, which lifted off from a snowy field on March 16, 1926, has been written about extensively. Earlier solid-fueled rockets existed, but liquid-fueled rockets promised the sustainability and control needed to send spacecraft and humans into Earth orbit and beyond.
“The rocket’s reach was short, but it marked the moment that humanity entered a new era,” said Kevin Schindler, author of “Robert Goddard’s Massachusetts,” speaking at the site of that first launch as part of a centennial commemoration held Saturday in Auburn (March 14). “It proved that liquid fuel could lift a craft skyward—the essential breakthrough that would one day carry humans to the moon.”
Photos from that day exist through the efforts of Goddard’s wife, as does a monument stand from where the rocket, nicknamed “Nell,” left the ground (today, located on a golf course). Over the decades, replicas of Nell have been built, even ones capable of flight. But a century later, a question about the rocket remains.
Where is it now?
First (and last?) to see
“Goddard didn’t seek the spotlight. He sought the truth. He was a scientist. Apart from his small team, very few people could say that they were truly there who felt the steady roar and saw the flash of fire against the New England snow. One of those people was my father,” said Thomas Hastings, addressing a small crowd who gathered in Auburn.
Hasting’s father, Gerald, who was 10 years old on that day in 1926, was sledding with some friends when he saw “four people in heavy coats got out of [their] vehicle and remove some rather large objects.” As he later learned, those four were Goddard, Goddard’s wife Esther, Goddard’s crew chief Henry Sachs, and Clark University assistant physics professor Percy Roope.