This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Robert H. Goddard article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives:
1Auto-archiving period: 365 days
![]() |
![]() | This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on March 16, 2008, March 16, 2009, March 16, 2010, March 16, 2014, and March 16, 2016. |
![]() |
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
At present (13 May 2006), there is too much coverage of the New York Times' criticism of Goddard's work, too little coverage of the major patents Goddard was awarded (and their importance), and too little on Goddard's early research (esp. his groundbreaking work A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes).
The New York Times section currently takes up as much as 20 percent of the writeup of this article. While the lack of vision by the New York Times is important to understand in viewing Goddard's legacy, it is still only an amusing anecdote in Goddard's life. Therefore, it needs to be viewed in the larger context of Goddard's career, and that should mean giving greater emphasis to what he accomplished.
It is important to understand Goddard's major patents, which are hardly mentioned at all in this article, and his pioneering book, which until recently had not even been mentioned in the body of the article. Clearly, there are a number of improvements to be made to bring up the quality of this article. -- Christopher Nieman 19:14, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I removed much of the Times quotation and the point is still made. This article had a large part in causing his "secrecy" and labeling him "mad scientist"-far from an amusing anecdote. Orbitnut ( talk) 16:45, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
Does anyone have any information on what Goddard's view on religion was, if any? - JyL 28 February 2007
I hate to write speculative information into an article, and the quotation from the wolfram site about the A-1 and A-2 being based on Goddard's work is questionable. So I will make a few comments here.
Goddard's work was well known in the 1920s and 1930s. He was somewhat mysterious, but it was known that he performed experiments and built rockets -- he was not, like dozens of others, just writing articles that theorized and fantasized about spacetravel. In the mid 1930s, German intelligence supplied von Braun with information about Goddard's work, but it may not have been much more than what was available in American publications and newspapers.
The A-1 and A-2 were built in 1933 and 34, and used an internal spin-table to stabilize the rocket. It's an unusual idea, and Goddard had done the same thing in 1927. This was before German spying in the USA, but perhaps von Braun knew of it from other sources. The A-3, built in 1936 contained a gyroscopic guidance system and was steered by vanes in the exhaust, the same as Goddard's 1932 rocket. Did von Braun know that? The concept of gyroscopic guidance may have independently occured to the Germans (and also GIRD in 1936 in Russia for their cruise missiles), because people were aware that underwater torpedos used gyroscopes.
Goddard had difficulty with engine burn-through and although he built a regeneratively cooled engine in 1923, he abandoned the idea. In this regard, Klaus Reidel's engines and later work was much superior. Reidel attempted Oberth's idea of immersing the engine in the fuel tank (the Kegelduese) which caused an explosion. Then they tried encasing the engine in standing water. And eventually Reidel had the idea of regenerative cooling by fuel.
Goddard's work was sophsticated, much more so than VfR or even GIRD, but he could not compete with the massive effort that Germany began in the late 1930s, with military funding and teams of professional engineers. It's not the case that something like the V-2 comes about from a single genius or some stolen secrets, it is a massive effort and the real secret is systems management, which is what von Braun did. DonPMitchell ( talk) 22:26, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
"The Peenemünde rocket group led by Wernher von Braun may have benefited from the pre-1939 contacts [with Goddard] to a limited extent, but had also started from the work of their own space pioneer, Hermann Oberth"
( talk) 17:51, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
With regard to German information about Goddard, I suspect his patents were more important than any of the dodgy spying activity. Take a look at the fuel-curtain cooling system on the V-2 engine, and then look at the diagram in Goddard's 1939 patent 2,217,649. The similarity is dramatic. But I do not think it is appropriate to insert that sort of speculation into this Wikipedia article. It's just something to take note of. DonPMitchell ( talk) 07:06, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
See the Viking (rocket) article. Rosen credits the V-2, ARS,Goddard for contributions to its design. Von Braun praised it as the most advanced at the time. Goddard and navy lab at Annapolis had some influence on RMI. Germans had access to Goddard's early patents. People keep saying he had no or lttle influence. Not so. Orbitnut ( talk) 18:12, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
Does anyone have any good evidence that this guy made a liquid rocket first? My understanding is that there's no good evidence that he did get there first. It might be worth mentioning that this is the case though, but at some points in its history the article has stated that Pedro Paulet definitely invented it first; it's not my understanding that, overall, the literature on liquid rockets states this, and hence I intend to remove any such claim, unless somebody can come up with really solid references.- Wolfkeeper 21:58, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
There is a pretty good discussion of Paulet in Sutton's book on the history of Liquid Fuel Rocket Engines. DonPMitchell ( talk) 06:55, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
I found a page from Clark University that mentions his brother. Is this good enough to cite?
http://www.clarku.edu/research/archives/goddard/faqs.cfm 99.156.135.206 ( talk) 19:03, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
His brother died young. Orbitnut ( talk) 21:28, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
I think that sentence:
He was the first not only to recognize the scientific potential of missiles and space travel but also to bring about the design and construction of the rockets needed to implement those ideas.[12]
should be changed, because clearly Tsiolkovski was first in this field. Goddard was first only in america. I haven't read the related bibliographical possition. Can anyone comment on that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.51.46.186 ( talk) 11:05, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
Sentence changed. Good catch. Orbitnut ( talk) 22:40, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
Recent edits relate to filing patents after death. As far as I know, there is no rule against it, being filed by his estate (or wife, as it says in the article). But presumably also, some filed before death were awarded after death. We should get this right. Gah4 ( talk) 22:15, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
This line is confusing, and needs some clarification:
Even though the cited NASA source says: "It was during this period that he proved his theory, by static laboratory test, that a rocket would perform in a vacuum and was therefore capable of operating in space."
A static test means by definition, that the rocket is tested by firing it while held down on a test stand (see the several references to static testing in this article). Most such test stands are outdoors (certainly the one Goddard used had to be, as rockets were in their infancy at the time). I doubt that Goddard tested his engine in a vacuum chamber in 1915. He must have used mathematics to deduce the vacuum thrust, possibly based on measurements, but certainly the claim was not empirically proved until the first rocket reached space (which proably would have been von Braun's V2?) JustinTime55 ( talk) 12:29, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
Goddard did test in a near vacuum in an evacuated tube in the lab at Clark. The small rocket engine barely moved so he could measure the thrust and prove that it would be propelled in a vacuum, so it was a static test in every sense. Call it a lab test if you want. Orbitnut ( talk) 23:52, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
Can someone please add the coordinates of the site where Goddard launched rockets at Roswell. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:DF:1F25:4667:396A:FCC3:9106:2B8B ( talk) 01:13, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
Some time ago, I was third opinion for Founding Fathers of the United States, as it seems that there is some question about who, exactly qualifies as a founding father. Different sources say different things. Most publications don't have room for all, so report on a select few. It seems the exact same problem here. Who, exactly, should be the Founding Fathers of rocketry. (Now there is a link, so someone can write the article.) Gah4 ( talk) 03:38, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Robert H. Goddard article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives:
1Auto-archiving period: 365 days
![]() |
![]() | This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on March 16, 2008, March 16, 2009, March 16, 2010, March 16, 2014, and March 16, 2016. |
![]() |
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
At present (13 May 2006), there is too much coverage of the New York Times' criticism of Goddard's work, too little coverage of the major patents Goddard was awarded (and their importance), and too little on Goddard's early research (esp. his groundbreaking work A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes).
The New York Times section currently takes up as much as 20 percent of the writeup of this article. While the lack of vision by the New York Times is important to understand in viewing Goddard's legacy, it is still only an amusing anecdote in Goddard's life. Therefore, it needs to be viewed in the larger context of Goddard's career, and that should mean giving greater emphasis to what he accomplished.
It is important to understand Goddard's major patents, which are hardly mentioned at all in this article, and his pioneering book, which until recently had not even been mentioned in the body of the article. Clearly, there are a number of improvements to be made to bring up the quality of this article. -- Christopher Nieman 19:14, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I removed much of the Times quotation and the point is still made. This article had a large part in causing his "secrecy" and labeling him "mad scientist"-far from an amusing anecdote. Orbitnut ( talk) 16:45, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
Does anyone have any information on what Goddard's view on religion was, if any? - JyL 28 February 2007
I hate to write speculative information into an article, and the quotation from the wolfram site about the A-1 and A-2 being based on Goddard's work is questionable. So I will make a few comments here.
Goddard's work was well known in the 1920s and 1930s. He was somewhat mysterious, but it was known that he performed experiments and built rockets -- he was not, like dozens of others, just writing articles that theorized and fantasized about spacetravel. In the mid 1930s, German intelligence supplied von Braun with information about Goddard's work, but it may not have been much more than what was available in American publications and newspapers.
The A-1 and A-2 were built in 1933 and 34, and used an internal spin-table to stabilize the rocket. It's an unusual idea, and Goddard had done the same thing in 1927. This was before German spying in the USA, but perhaps von Braun knew of it from other sources. The A-3, built in 1936 contained a gyroscopic guidance system and was steered by vanes in the exhaust, the same as Goddard's 1932 rocket. Did von Braun know that? The concept of gyroscopic guidance may have independently occured to the Germans (and also GIRD in 1936 in Russia for their cruise missiles), because people were aware that underwater torpedos used gyroscopes.
Goddard had difficulty with engine burn-through and although he built a regeneratively cooled engine in 1923, he abandoned the idea. In this regard, Klaus Reidel's engines and later work was much superior. Reidel attempted Oberth's idea of immersing the engine in the fuel tank (the Kegelduese) which caused an explosion. Then they tried encasing the engine in standing water. And eventually Reidel had the idea of regenerative cooling by fuel.
Goddard's work was sophsticated, much more so than VfR or even GIRD, but he could not compete with the massive effort that Germany began in the late 1930s, with military funding and teams of professional engineers. It's not the case that something like the V-2 comes about from a single genius or some stolen secrets, it is a massive effort and the real secret is systems management, which is what von Braun did. DonPMitchell ( talk) 22:26, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
"The Peenemünde rocket group led by Wernher von Braun may have benefited from the pre-1939 contacts [with Goddard] to a limited extent, but had also started from the work of their own space pioneer, Hermann Oberth"
( talk) 17:51, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
With regard to German information about Goddard, I suspect his patents were more important than any of the dodgy spying activity. Take a look at the fuel-curtain cooling system on the V-2 engine, and then look at the diagram in Goddard's 1939 patent 2,217,649. The similarity is dramatic. But I do not think it is appropriate to insert that sort of speculation into this Wikipedia article. It's just something to take note of. DonPMitchell ( talk) 07:06, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
See the Viking (rocket) article. Rosen credits the V-2, ARS,Goddard for contributions to its design. Von Braun praised it as the most advanced at the time. Goddard and navy lab at Annapolis had some influence on RMI. Germans had access to Goddard's early patents. People keep saying he had no or lttle influence. Not so. Orbitnut ( talk) 18:12, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
Does anyone have any good evidence that this guy made a liquid rocket first? My understanding is that there's no good evidence that he did get there first. It might be worth mentioning that this is the case though, but at some points in its history the article has stated that Pedro Paulet definitely invented it first; it's not my understanding that, overall, the literature on liquid rockets states this, and hence I intend to remove any such claim, unless somebody can come up with really solid references.- Wolfkeeper 21:58, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
There is a pretty good discussion of Paulet in Sutton's book on the history of Liquid Fuel Rocket Engines. DonPMitchell ( talk) 06:55, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
I found a page from Clark University that mentions his brother. Is this good enough to cite?
http://www.clarku.edu/research/archives/goddard/faqs.cfm 99.156.135.206 ( talk) 19:03, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
His brother died young. Orbitnut ( talk) 21:28, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
I think that sentence:
He was the first not only to recognize the scientific potential of missiles and space travel but also to bring about the design and construction of the rockets needed to implement those ideas.[12]
should be changed, because clearly Tsiolkovski was first in this field. Goddard was first only in america. I haven't read the related bibliographical possition. Can anyone comment on that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.51.46.186 ( talk) 11:05, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
Sentence changed. Good catch. Orbitnut ( talk) 22:40, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
Recent edits relate to filing patents after death. As far as I know, there is no rule against it, being filed by his estate (or wife, as it says in the article). But presumably also, some filed before death were awarded after death. We should get this right. Gah4 ( talk) 22:15, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
This line is confusing, and needs some clarification:
Even though the cited NASA source says: "It was during this period that he proved his theory, by static laboratory test, that a rocket would perform in a vacuum and was therefore capable of operating in space."
A static test means by definition, that the rocket is tested by firing it while held down on a test stand (see the several references to static testing in this article). Most such test stands are outdoors (certainly the one Goddard used had to be, as rockets were in their infancy at the time). I doubt that Goddard tested his engine in a vacuum chamber in 1915. He must have used mathematics to deduce the vacuum thrust, possibly based on measurements, but certainly the claim was not empirically proved until the first rocket reached space (which proably would have been von Braun's V2?) JustinTime55 ( talk) 12:29, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
Goddard did test in a near vacuum in an evacuated tube in the lab at Clark. The small rocket engine barely moved so he could measure the thrust and prove that it would be propelled in a vacuum, so it was a static test in every sense. Call it a lab test if you want. Orbitnut ( talk) 23:52, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
Can someone please add the coordinates of the site where Goddard launched rockets at Roswell. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:DF:1F25:4667:396A:FCC3:9106:2B8B ( talk) 01:13, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
Some time ago, I was third opinion for Founding Fathers of the United States, as it seems that there is some question about who, exactly qualifies as a founding father. Different sources say different things. Most publications don't have room for all, so report on a select few. It seems the exact same problem here. Who, exactly, should be the Founding Fathers of rocketry. (Now there is a link, so someone can write the article.) Gah4 ( talk) 03:38, 25 August 2022 (UTC)