Robert Goddard’s Rocket
Robert Goddard dreamed of going to space.
He said, “It was one of the quiet, colorful afternoons of sheer beauty which we have in October in New England, and as I looked toward the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet.”
He was trying to make a rocket because a airplane couldn’t fly without gravity. He took apart Chinese fireworks. They were powered by gunpowder, but gunpowder wouldn’t work for the rocket, because the rocket needed a strong steady push to keep it going. Finally he decided to use liquid oxygen and hydrogen. But fuel was hard to get because liquid oxygen had to be stored at -297′ F and hydrogen at -423′ F.
His first successful rocket was 10 1/2 feet tall and weighed 10 pounds. It was launched in 1926. His assistant lit the fuel with a blow torch. It went 41 feet high. The first flight lasted only 2.5 seconds but the space age had begun. He died in 1945 and never sent a rocket to space but but the Russian satellite Sputnik in 1957 and the American satellite Explorer in 1958 were descendants of Goddard’s rocket.
Here is how to make a a model liquid fueled rocket:You need :
- An empty wine bottle and cork
- baking soda
- tissue paper
- vinegar
What you do:
- You take the wine bottle and put a half cup of vinegar in it.
- Then you take it outside roll up a teaspoon of baking soda in the tissue paper.
- Drop the packet of baking soda in the bottle and quickly stick in the cork; wait awhile; the cork will fly through the air.
Submitted by The Swordmaster
