The Silent Revolution: How R.H. Goddard Helped Start the Space Age

摘要

The author hypothesizes that there were two revolutions that started the international space flight movement of the 1920s that set the stage for the later Space Age. The first was what may be called the Goddard revolution. The second was the Oberth revolution. The present paper focuses upon the first. A later paper is contemplated to cover the second.rnThe first revolution is termed "silent" for several reasons. One is that this development was so subtle and little studied in the literature that it was previously not identified as a revolution and hence, was hidden. However, the main theme of the paper is that American rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard planted the seeds of the idea of the "space rocket" into the public consciousness and that this concept was truly revolutionary.rnMoreover, this was an international and not strictly American development. It occurred unintentionally, as an unexpected sensationalistic reaction in the press to the release on 12 January 1920 of Goddard's treatise A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes (1919). This reaction was not confined to newspapers but was also manifested in magazines, poetry, music, and silent films. The latter media played a surprisingly strong role in conveying the concept of the space rocket; this is another reason for calling the revolution a "silent" one.rnThis paper also places the earlier pioneering work of the Russian Konstantin £. Tsiolkovsky into another perspective. It is seen that this work was unknown in the West during this period and that he was neglected in his own country. It was only some years later, upon the onset of the Oberth revolution that opened with the publication of Hermann Oberth's own seminal book, Die Rakete zu den Planetenraumen (1923), that Tsiolkovsky began to receive the wider acclaim he deserved.rnThe paper further identifies the Mars Furor as an important element in the Goddard revolution and how its own influence continued to appear as part of the reaction to A Method. Finally, the paper briefly examines the perception of the space rocket in the science fiction literature before and after Goddard's Method.