The Long Space Age

by Alexander MacDonald

  When Goddard received a letter expressing interest in a rocket-propelled drone for antiaircraft target practice from Major General A. H. Sunderland, chief of the Coast Artillery Corps, a little over a year after returning to Roswell, he jumped at the opportunity. In October 1936, Lieutenant John W. Sessums Jr. of the U.S. Army Air Corps flew out to visit and evaluate the Goddard workshop for Sunderland and was inundated with a flood of enthusiasm and information from Goddard. “Goddard was so absorbed in telling me about the status of his work, and the future possibilities of it, that he drove in first gear the entire fifteen miles from the launch tower back to the shop.”171 There was no immediate funding result, as Sessums’s army air corps superiors were not as enthusiastic as Goddard or Sunderland. Nonetheless, although Lehman suggests that the relationship with Sunderland ended there until the Second World War, the two in fact continued to scheme about ways of getting the military to fund the concept, both in correspondence and in meetings with Sunderland in Washington, right through to the start of the war.172

  Understanding Goddard’s continued pursuit of military support helps to explain what Clary referred to as “the most persistent mistake of his career”—his emphasis on gyroscopic stabilization for his rocket.173 Clary attributes this mistake to an assessment that Goddard “was not trying to build a guided missile, which would have required steering to reach a destination. Rather, his were sounding rockets, intended to rise straight up and then return to Earth by parachute. Gyroscopes could be useful in steering, but were cumbersome and unnecessary for stabilization; properly placing the rocket’s center of gravity forward would suffice, but that also was a ballistic principle that escaped him.”174 In fact, the evidence suggests that Goddard was indeed trying to develop a guided missile. This evidence can be found in the letters and reports that he wrote to both Roosevelt and Sunderland, in which, trying to sell his program, he prominently placed statements emphasizing that he and his team had “carried out a sufficient number of tests to demonstrate practical flight control by gyro, both during and after propulsion, and also parachute release and descent.”175 Clary faults Goddard for not taking the simplest and most effective approach to his task of the moment—a high-altitude sounding rocket. But Goddard was not focused only on that objective. He was also thinking and planning for the next step in the development of spaceflight technology, which he rightly knew would be guided missiles.

  By September 1938, with the threat of war in Europe looming large, Harry Guggenheim, who had also been funding rocketry work under Theodore von Kármán at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT), had come to the same conclusion about the need for guided missiles. He had been helped to reach this conclusion by Goddard, who, in his letters to Guggenheim and Lindbergh, had increasingly begun to emphasize the military applications of his rockets, as war seemed increasingly imminent. Lindbergh came to similar conclusions during his tour of German aviation capabilities for the American government. He wrote to Goddard in July 1937, “It seems to me that the first practical use for liquid-propelled rockets may be for military purposes. . . . There is constantly increasing interests in rockets among military men in Europe, although it is confined to comparatively few officers at present. Don’t you think it might be advisable to establish closer contact with our Ordnance Department?”176 Goddard hardly needed the encouragement, responding to Lindbergh that “I feel, as you do, that the rocket is inherently an offensive rather than a defensive weapon. It is likely, however, that applications to antiaircraft problems will be made first, because of the great need for developments of this sort. This does not, of course, alter the desirability of developing offensive applications, such as long-range shelling and high-speed planes.” Lindbergh and Goddard continued an extensive correspondence on the military applications of rocketry and the best ways of interesting the military in their development.177 Goddard also addressed the subject squarely with Guggenheim in his annual report in February 1938: “In view of the present state of world affairs it seems desirable to continue the work along the most advantageous lines, especially since the problem has been brought to a point where definite applications appear to be within reach, and I would be glad to help in any way I can to have military applications realized as early as possible”178 In September 1938, Guggenheim called together his entire informal rocketry advisory board, including Goddard, von Kármán, Professor Clark Millikan of Caltech, and NACA representatives. He informed them that they “were all engaged in working for the country’s defense” and that they should henceforth pursue more active work on military applications.179 Goddard had now been given completely free rein in his engagement with the military. Within a few years, he would secure from the navy the single largest annual research budget of his career.

  Goddard’s final years working for the navy on jet-assisted takeoff (JATO) rockets, and the personal difficulties he encountered in doing so, are well known. What is not so well known is how aggressively he pursed this new role and how he made a conscious decision to leave the auspices of the Guggenheim Foundation in favor of the military. Lehman explains the move as an initiative of Guggenheim’s, stating that Guggenheim informed Goddard that he “planned to offer the professor’s services and the New Mexico establishment to the military services,” and that “Goddard had accepted the proposal.”180 Clary suggests that Goddard’s turn toward the military stemmed from the 1938 meeting at Falaise, after which he felt that further foundation support would not be forthcoming.181 The evidence does not support this position. The Guggenheim Foundation would continue to support Goddard fully for another two years and would provide Goddard extraordinary support during the transition to military work in 1941, including a $3,000 grant and a $10,000 loan, repaid in 1943.182 Goddard had little reason to worry about a stoppage in funding, as Guggenheim had also recently vowed on national radio to support Goddard’s work “indefinitely.”183 There is no indication that Guggenheim wanted to off-load his rocket researcher to the military. On the contrary, while supporting Goddard’s military engagement, Guggenheim was also concerned that it might distract him from his main purpose of high-altitude flight. Guggenheim wrote to Goddard in July 1941 stating, “We do not want to jeopardize the future of the work we have already carried on, unless there are some very good reasons from a National Defense point of view to do so.”184 The evidence argues more strongly for the view that Goddard’s impetus for his work with the army and the navy in the Second World War was internally driven and stemmed from his long-held belief that the military was the most probable source for the large-scale funding needed to achieve his dream of spaceflight-capable rocketry.

  In 1938, after the meeting at Falaise, Goddard increased the intensity of his lobbying for military funding. He wrote to Guggenheim enthusiastically noting that “problems regarding national defense are beginning to arise, both along the lines of aviation and ordnance, which require for their solution effective liquid-fuel rocket propulsion.”185 He continued his correspondence with General Sunderland and begun working with officers in charge of Army Ordnance magazine to insert a promotional article on liquid-fuel rocketry.186 On his own initiative and with the help of Lindbergh, Guggenheim, and Abbot, his military contacts and connections soon proliferated. After a discussion with Guggenheim in October 1938, Major James “Jimmy” Doolittle, famed military flyer and aviation pioneer, flew out to Roswell to evaluate the wartime business potential of Goddard’s work for his employer, the Shell Oil Company.187 A second inquiry from industry came in early 1939 from ordnance inventor Lester P. Barlow, consulting engineer and special assistant to Glenn Martin at the Glenn L. Martin Company. The company expected to receive $100,000–$200,000 from Army Ordnance for glider-bomber development. They hoped to pursue rocket work in tandem with this effort and wanted to hire Goddard as a consultant.188 Goddard eagerly pursued this relationship until it was clear that there would be no significant funds attached to the consulting work. He encouraged his former employees
, many now in the armed services, such as Homer Boushey, Clarence Hickman, and Nils Riffolt, to lobby their respective departments for support. By 1940, Goddard was corresponding and meeting with a wide variety of high-profile figures within the military establishment, including General Henry “Hap” Arnold and Vannevar Bush.189 As he had done during the First World War, Goddard again situated himself within the military research community at the highest level in an effort to leverage his expertise and access into major funding for his program.

  Although Goddard had been self-catalyzing in approaching the military, his success was attributable in no small measure to a source of support that has been underappreciated in the Goddard historiography: the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) and its director of Aeronautical Research, Dr. George Lewis.190 In a number of respects, the NACA was the initial locus of wartime support for Goddard, with Vannevar Bush as its chairman, Lindbergh and Guggenheim as influential committee members, and having previously included Charles Martin and Charles Abbot. Goddard’s diary records that, on a visit to Washington on May 24, 1938, he met with the NACA’s first employee and only-ever executive secretary, John F. Victory.191 In June, Goddard reported this to Lindbergh, who responded in August that he had received a letter from George Lewis at the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory asking Lindbergh for Goddard’s “recommendations with reference to any rocket research on which the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics might focus.”192 Goddard responded with suggestions for liquid-propellant rockets on gliders, application of rockets in turbines, and rockets for accelerating and decelerating planes.193

  The exchange was the start of a long and productive correspondence between the two researchers. Lewis wrote directly to Goddard in January 1938, offering the use of the Langley high-speed wind tunnels for aerodynamic tests of Goddard’s rocket. This led to the testing of a model of one of Goddard’s eighteen-inch rocket flight casings later that year.194 Lewis’s most significant assistance, however, came in June 1941, when he confided in Goddard that evidence from recently captured German planes showed evidence of JATO attachments. He suggested that if Goddard could submit a workable design for liquid-oxygen rocket-assisted takeoff, he could see a way for such a project to be initiated under the NACA or the navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics.195 The secondary literature has credited Boushey and Robert Truax with Goddard’s navy contract, but although they played their roles, it was ultimately the word of the eminent Lewis that had the greatest impact. Goddard sent Lewis a report on June 23, and by July 14, Rear Admiral J. H. Towers, chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, wrote to Goddard to notify him of the bureau’s intention to offer him a contract.196 Lewis and the NACA, the organization that would later be transformed into NASA, had led Goddard to his long-sought-after large military contract.

  The JATO development contract with the navy would initiate the last major phase of Goddard’s research and life. Its importance has been underappreciated, in part because its full financial value has never been put into context.

  Although Goddard’s lobbying of General Arnold had also paid off with a six-month, $13,000 contract from the army air force for JATO development, it was the navy project, starting at $40,000 for 1942, that would occupy him until his death in 1945.197 Goddard worked on the initial six-month contracts at his workshop in Roswell, but by July he had moved to the U.S. Navy Engineering Experiment Station at Annapolis, Maryland, where he more than doubled the size of his team and workshop. As Goddard had foreseen in 1915, military development programs, once mobilized, could provide for large budgets. In July 1943, the navy exercised an option on his contract, extending it another year and increasing its value from $87,267 to $191,867—making it by far the single largest contract or grant of his career.198 Military funding had, as he had long expected, enabled him to scale up his operations. As had been the case previously, however, the nature of his exchange with the military also shaped his objectives and development program—away from high-altitude rocketry and toward more-terrestrial, in fact horizontal, uses.

  Although a JATO development contract may not seem like a move closer to spaceflight, it is important to recognize that Rhodes’s evaluation of the situation was essentially correct: there was no U.S. military need for long-range rocketry in the Second World War.199 When Goddard presented to Army Ordnance in 1940, the issue was not whether or not he made an effective presentation. The military leaders had been correct in their assessment of the near-term potential of rocketry and rightly concluded that there was no near-term need for rocketry in the U.S. armed services—with the sole possible exception of small rockets to boost airplanes on takeoff.200 Moreover, unlike Germany, America did not have major military and civilian targets within a couple of hundred miles of its territory. Nor did it have a desperate dictator that was willing to gamble vast sums of money on an expensive and impressive, but ultimately strategically unimportant, psychological weapon. The rational evaluation by the U.S. armed services of the limited use of liquid-fuel rocketry for them within the context of the Second World War meant that there was only minimal potential for an exchange with the military to begin with. By this measure, Goddard showed significant skill in maximizing that potential—receiving major funds from the army air force and the navy.

  There is a strain of argument—started by von Kármán—that suggests that it was the liquid-fuel rocketry work being done at GALCIT, rather than by Goddard, that was the important American rocketry program in the Second World War. It is worth noting, however, that there were only four major liquid-fuel rocket efforts during the war: the German program led by von Braun, the Russian Gas-Dynamic Laboratory and sharashka work led by Korolev and Tikhonravov, the JATO work at GALCIT, and the U.S. Navy program led by Goddard. Von Kármán at GALCIT did have greater success with the JATO problem, but largely because he and Frank Malina had set about trying to solve the specific problem presented to them by the military—emphasizing solid-fuel rockets and using red-fuming nitric acid and gasoline for their liquid-fuel rockets—whereas Goddard was trying to shoehorn the liquid-fuel rocketry approach that he believed could get him to spaceflight—liquid-oxygen and gasoline—into the military contract parameters. That Goddard was able to get his ambitious liquid-fuel JATO rocket program funded at all is in fact nothing short of remarkable.

  Goddard had to sacrifice much, however, to achieve this feat: leaving the comfort of Guggenheim auspices, expending $4,500 of personal funds to keep the work going during the time of transition, and shifting away from his beloved high-altitude rockets to the simpler, if more powerful, rockets required for JATO applications.201 It had also greatly increased his stress and replaced the warmth and solitary comfort of New Mexico with the political and climatic volatility of Maryland. The tragic result was that during the three years at Annapolis, as the responsibilities, bureaucratic paperwork, and stress mounted, Goddard’s health declined rapidly, ultimately resulting in his death at age sixty-two, on August 10, 1945. Through great effort and sacrifice, Goddard had finally achieved the large military support that he had originally believed was required to develop his high-altitude rockets, only to be unable to see the full fruits of that final partnership.

  Even as he was dying, however, Goddard was preparing to scale up his development program with his first and last real industry partner—the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, heir to the Wright brothers’ corporate holdings and Goddard’s employer at the time of his death. His objective was the advancement of his long-range goals for his liquid-fuel rockets, planning to turn over to Curtiss-Wright the task of manufacturing the JATOs and thereby developing an infrastructure that would enable him to carry on the development of his rocket after the war.202 In 1942, he licensed a number of his rocket patents to Curtiss-Wright in the hope that they would protect his intellectual property from infringement and that the royalties, half of which were to be given to the Guggenheim Foundation, might be used to further advance his work.203 As the war ended, a number of industrial concerns approached Goddard for
assistance with their nascent liquid-fuel rocketry programs that, with the capture and reverse-engineering of the German V-2s, they hoped would become big business. In early 1945, Goddard met with Lovell Lawrence of Reaction Motors Incorporated, and with William Coolidge and Irving Langmuir of General Electric, with the result that both companies tried to attract him as an engineering consultant for expected upcoming rocketry work. Goddard remained committed to Curtiss-Wright, however, and just before his untimely death had made preparations to move himself and his team to the company headquarters in Caldwell, New Jersey, so as to focus on developing the capabilities required to compete for more military rocketry contracts in the postwar period. It is tempting to think that, had he lived into the Cold War era, Goddard would have taken up a prominent role working with the military and captains of industry, as he had so often done before, as America entered the Space Age.

  An empirical examination of the funding sources tapped during Robert Goddard’s career-long spaceflight development program provides a new perspective on both Goddard and the broader economic trends of early spaceflight technology. A chronological chart of the funding is provided in table 3.1. The dollar-value conversions are in terms of the production worker compensation (PWC) ratio, a metric useful for comparing the cost of projects, such as space technology development, where the chief input is skilled labor; and the relative share of GDP ratio, a metric that indicates what an equivalent share of total U.S. GDP would be worth today.