In December, Abbot was also corresponding with Arthur Noyes at Caltech, which, under the leadership of George Hale, had just secured the funding for the Palomar Observatory and its two-hundred-inch reflector. Abbot reported to Goddard on December 27 that Noyes had “become much interested in the matter from what I told him last summer, and it may be that he and Dr. Hale may see their way to assist in the completion of the development in case you still see good hope in that direction.”143 Given Hale’s familiarity with Goddard’s research from their time together at Mount Wilson, and Hale’s boyhood interest in spaceflight, it is tempting to think that Hale was considering one last great space exploration project. In late January 1929, Abbot sent a letter to Noyes officially requesting support from the fund for the two-hundred-inch telescope: “If, therefore, you should still be as favourably interested as you were last summer and should see your way toward raising for this purpose $20,000 or $25,000 and inviting Dr. Goddard to undertake these interesting studies in the neighborhood of Pasadena, I think it would be very well worth while.”144 After receiving a response, Abbot sent Goddard a letter that reveals what is possibly one of the most significant missed connections in space history. Abbot reports that Noyes discussed the possibility with Caltech and Mount Wilson staff and determined that “Although they were warmly interested in the project as he was himself, they felt that the terms of gift of the money for promoting the 200-inch telescope could not fairly cover the promotion of the Goddard rocket. Dr. Hale had been in Europe and unavailable, and would not be returning until some date in May.”145 It is impossible to know whether Hale’s presence in Pasadena at the time of the letter would have made any difference. The collection of Hale’s correspondence at the Caltech Archives contains no further information on the matter, so it does not seem that Hale had given the subject much consideration. However, given that Hale was without peer as the most accomplished space exploration fund-raiser of the era, and that Goddard was at the time without peer in the technical development of liquid-fuel rocketry, it is an interesting thought experiment to consider how different the history of spaceflight might have been if Hale had been present and had decided to take up the development of Goddard’s rocket.
While these letters were being sent back and forth across the continent, Goddard continued to work toward his next model of rocket. By the summer of 1929, his efforts had achieved spectacular, headline-grabbing success. The sudden public drama of the flight of July 17, 1929, was captured by the Boston Globe:
“MOON ROCKET” MAN’S TEST ALARMS WHOLE COUNTRYSIDE:
BLAST AS METAL PROJECTILE IS FIRED THROUGH AUBURN TOWER ECHOES FOR MILES AROUND, STARTS HUNTS FOR FALLEN PLANE, AND FINALLY REVEALS GODDARD EXPERIMENT STATION146
Goddard had conducted a number of test flights since his early ones in 1926, but this was his first widespread national attention since the early days of 1920–1921. The rocket had risen 20 feet above the 60-foot launch tower and ended up 171 feet from the center of the tower: it had flown at an average velocity of about 55 feet per second.147 The immediate upshot of this accomplishment was a torrent of newspaper men attempting to see his testing station. This resulted in Goddard and Abbot requesting and obtaining permission from the War Department to relocate the experiments to Camp Devens, near the Cambridge train station and twenty-five miles from Goddard’s workshop.148 Goddard was now firmly into productive development work and became somewhat annoyed by the renewed media attention. Nevertheless, it would have a direct positive impact on his funding. While he continued his development program under an additional $5,000 grant from the Smithsonian and the Research Corporation, the dramatic newspaper stories of the test flight had already put in motion a series of events that would lead to the most significant source of funding of his career—funding that for the first time would allow him to dedicate himself full-time to the development of liquid-fuel rocketry.149
The most significant funding for the early development of liquid-fuel rocketry in America did not come from the government or the military, as Goddard had expected, but from the private purses of the Guggenheim family. Goddard received funding directly from Daniel Guggenheim—who had built the family mining empire—and, after his death, from the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation with the assistance and advocacy of Daniel’s son, Harry Guggenheim. As Pendray tells the story, Harry Guggenheim, an avid aviation enthusiast and supporter, and his close friend Colonel Charles Lindbergh, then one of the most famous men in America after he had been the first to complete a nonstop transatlantic flight, were discussing the problem of high-altitude aviation on a July day at Falaise, Harry’s home in Port Washington, New York. While the two men were discussing the problem, Harry’s wife, Caroline, who was reading the paper, noticed a story about Goddard’s recent rocket flight.150 Harry suggested to Lindbergh that this may be the answer to high-altitude flight and suggested that he get in contact with Goddard. Although the story does not account for the four-month delay between when the events occurred and when Lindbergh telephoned Goddard on November 22, 1929, the support from Lindbergh was immediate and strong once contact was made. Lindbergh visited Goddard’s laboratory and home on November 23, and the two began their long conversation about the future of spaceflight. When Lindbergh asked whether it would be possible to send a rocket to the Moon, Goddard responded in the affirmative but added that it would cost at least a million dollars.151 Goddard then turned the conversation to what he thought was a more reasonable program—$25,000 a year for four years to develop a high-altitude rocket. Lindbergh would later write of the encounter in his autobiography: “the thought of sending a rocket to the moon set my mind spinning.”152 Lindbergh was hooked and quickly worked to find Goddard his funds.
Interestingly, however, the first connection Lindbergh made for Goddard was not to a philanthropic source but to private industry—the Du Pont Company, which had once held a monopoly over the American explosives market. Lindbergh asked Goddard to meet him on November 29, at the office of Henry du Pont, head of the DuPont Company. During the ensuing meeting, three DuPont laboratory employees, who Goddard said had been looking into the question of liquid oxygen rockets “in a very general way,” grilled him about the technical details of his rockets and their near-term applications.153 This evidently made both Goddard and Lindbergh uncomfortable, and, after personally flying Goddard back to Worcester, Lindbergh apparently confided in him, saying, “The Du Pont people did not have the right attitude towards the work. . . . He said that any extensive support should come from some person interested in the scientific side of things rather than in their immediate applications, and said he himself was greatly interested in the work, was convinced of its importance, and thought it ought to receive very substantial support even on the basis of the result already attained. He said he knew Dr. Merriam of the Carnegie Institution very well, and intended to see him in a few days.”154 Thus Goddard was taken under the wing of one of America’s most prominent figures and given privileged access into the world of the rich and powerful. A new field of patrons and opportunities soon opened up before him.
Within four days, on December 2, Abbot wrote to Goddard of a visit he had received from John Merriam, president of the Carnegie Institution, who shared a desire to take Goddard’s work to a new level: “Dr. Merriam indicated that he thought that $100,000 or more should be made available and, as I understand him, Col. Lindbergh is likely to see the way to raise this money for the purpose.” On December 10, a conference was convened at Merriam’s apartment in Washington, with Merriam, Goddard, Lindbergh, and Abbot, as well as Drs. Walter Adams and Horace Babcock from the Carnegie Institution–funded Mount Wilson Observatory, Dr. Charles Marvin, chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau, and Dr. John Fleming of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution.155 Goddard’s report from the meeting shows the various scientific interests that had converged on the technology: Lindbergh’s interest in the rocket’s relevance to aviation; Adams’s interest in using the rocket to perfor
m spectrographic analysis of the Sun above the atmosphere; Fleming’s ideas on the possibility of using the technology to measure the magnetic field lines and ion content above the atmosphere and to investigate ionospheric radio propagation; and Babcock’s thoughts on the possibility of using the vehicle to take solar coronagraphs without waiting for an eclipse.156 When Marvin estimated that $100,000 would be required to cover ten miles and that $500,000 might be necessary for a hundred-mile-capable system, Lindbergh stated that he was willing to devote all the time he could to furthering the work and that he was sure he could secure the necessary funds.157 After two hours the conference split up, and Goddard emerged with a new nucleus of support centered on Lindbergh, who had become enamored with both Goddard and the vision of spaceflight.
The Carnegie Institution’s support was the first to become material, although Lindbergh and the Guggenheim family were not far behind. On December 19, Merriam sent a letter to Goddard offering him $5,000 in funding—a direct match of the Smithsonian’s last grant and an evident attempt to put the Carnegie Institution on equal footing with Goddard’s longest-standing institutional supporter. On June 12, 1930, however, a letter was delivered to Atwood at Clark that would change Goddard’s fortunes more substantially.
Although Lindbergh had not mentioned the Guggenheims at the conference, he knew that he could count on their interest and support if he asked for it. The immense mining fortune of the Guggenheim family had established the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, and ten Guggenheim Schools of Aeronautics sprang up across the country. These had already played a major role in the development of passenger aircraft, scheduled airliners, and general aeronautics. The philanthropy had also given a high-visibility boost to the family’s reputation, which had suffered in previous decades due to the family’s connections to bloody strike-breaking activity, political bribery, and unethical labor policies.158 With Harry in Cuba as the American ambassador, Lindbergh visited Daniel Guggenheim personally and argued that rocket flight was a logical extension of aeronautics and that Goddard was the man to extend it. Convinced of the endeavor’s worthiness on Lindbergh’s recommendation, Daniel Guggenheim wrote to Atwood offering Goddard $50,000 in funding over the next two years, along with a statement to the effect that if progress on the work was deemed satisfactory, another $50,000 would be made available.159 This was the start of what would become the most significant single source of support for Goddard’s spaceflight development program. It was an arrangement that would make Goddard one of the most richly financed independent American scientists in the early twentieth century outside of a U.S. government or corporate laboratory. Although family signaling motivations were part of the general backdrop to the Guggenheims’ philanthropy toward scientific research, their support of Goddard was essentially a reflection of the intrinsic interests of a small group of wealthy and influential individuals who were interested in high-altitude flight and who shared in Goddard’s own personal motivations.
The initial grant was roughly equivalent to all the grants that Goddard had received over the previous twelve years combined. Atwood immediately accepted the offer and established at Clark the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Measurement and Investigation of High Altitudes. In late July, after the school year ended, Goddard would move to Roswell, New Mexico, with his wife and team, which a year later would consist of five technicians and machinists. There, on a secluded farm, Goddard established his workshop and test range. Over the next eleven years, he would develop his liquid-fuel rocket through 103 static tests and 48 flight tests, incorporating essentially all the technical elements that were being integrated, more or less contemporaneously, into the V-2 rocket (for example, curtain cooling, gyroscopic stabilization, turbopumps).160 Over those eleven years, the Guggenheim family would contribute $188,500 to Goddard’s research, which would allow him to dedicate himself almost exclusively to the development of his rocket. Even with the death of Daniel Guggenheim in October 1930, his widow, Florence Guggenheim, continued the initial grant on the recommendation of Harry and Lindbergh.161
The commencement of the “Guggenheim Rocket Research Project,” as Goddard called it, has largely been interpreted by the secondary literature as marking the end of Goddard’s search for funding until the start of the Second World War. In fact, the Guggenheim funding was never enough to satisfy Goddard’s ambitions, and he continued to search for other sources of funding, specifically from the military. Shortly after arriving in Roswell, he reinitiated contact with the Army Ordnance Department and received two delegations of officers from the department in 1931 and 1932.162 He did not tell his sponsors back east about either of these visits. In 1932, the Great Depression temporarily required the Guggenheim family to suspend their support for Goddard, forcing him to return to Worcester and to turn to his old patron, Abbot, who managed to find another $250 dollars in the Hodgkins Fund. Such small funding made Goddard acutely aware of the effect that the economic crisis had on private funding opportunities: “To my mind, the future of such a new scientific development as the engineering side of rocketry will depend largely on how soon, and to what extent, recovery is made from the depression, which is at present unpredictable.”163 Military funding, if it could be made consistent, again seemed preferable to him.
Goddard contacted Lindbergh in May 1933 to notify him of his shifting interests: “It appears that the rocket will have applications as an antiaircraft weapon, owing to high speed and controllability. . . . Incidentally a work of this kind could be well camouflaged in New Mexico, with easy access to Government officials, through the New Mexico Military Institute. . . . If you can spare the time, I would very much like to discuss the matter with you, at your convenience, together with Mr. Guggenheim and Colonel Breckinridge, if they should care to be present.”164 Lindbergh, still recovering from the shocking kidnapping and murder of his son a year earlier, did not respond. Goddard took his case to Abbot, who arranged for meetings with the navy in late June, where he met Dr. George Lewis, of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), as well as Admiral King and Commander Pownall. The navy expressed interest in his rocket “air torpedo” concept and told him to expect a letter from the secretary of the navy.165 Goddard soon received a letter from Secretary Henry L. Roosevelt, to which he responded with a long report outlining two “possible applications to national defense”—the use of his rocket as a power plant and as an air torpedo. After more letters and review, Acting Secretary Admiral W. H. Standley informed Goddard on August 29 that “because of the great expense that would be entailed in the development of the rocket principle for ordnance and aircraft propulsion, which under present stringency of funds appears hardly warranted, the Department regrets it is not in a position to further such development.”166 Goddard, while pursuing the navy, had also asked Harry Guggenheim to renew his grant of $25,000 for work at Roswell, or at least $2,500 for continuing work at Clark. Harry committed the $2,500 to support his work at Clark in 1933 and was soon able to again promise $18,000 from the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation for the research to be continued again at Roswell in 1934.167 For the next seven years, support of $18,000–$20,000 was provided annually until Goddard decided to pursue military contracts with the start of the Second World War.
Although the Guggenheim funding proved to be a steady stream, it was never guaranteed as such. The Guggenheim grant had to be renewed on an annual basis, with the result that Goddard was forced to deal with perpetual funding uncertainties—uncertainties that interfered with both research at Roswell and pedagogy at Clark. Goddard continually felt that “a continuance beyond this year would depend quite as much, or more, on financial conditions as on the results attained.”168 His sponsors did, however, consider results important, specifically high-altitude ones. In a letter to Goddard in 1936, Lindbergh stressed the uniquely fortunate situation of having an advisory committee and sponsor that appreciated the long-term potential of Goddard’s rockets, but felt the need to add: “I feel that
the morale of everyone concerned would be greatly increased if you find it possible to obtain a record-breaking flight.”169 Although this seems an understandable request, it is important to put in context. The statement comes, in some respects, at the height of Goddard’s progress, having recently achieved a flight of 2.3 kilometers in altitude. For comparison, the flight of von Braun’s A-1 in 1934 was only 1.7 kilometers. Whereas von Braun subsequently received a massive infusion of capital after such a successful flight—the commitment from the Wehrmacht Ordnance and the Luftwaffe to build Peenemünde—the response by Goddard’s supporters was further encouragement to reach higher altitudes with the same amount of funding.170 The “record” being referenced was the altitude record for sounding balloons, which at the time was some 20 miles. That Lindbergh and others expected flights an order of magnitude higher than Goddard’s current capabilities with no additional increase in funds is a testament to the unrealistic expectations that they held for the work. Though Goddard may have fueled these expectations by deliberately understating the resources required to reach such a height, they were yet another reason for him to continue his search for military funding throughout his years at Roswell.
The Long Space Age Page 18