Excessive secrecy can kill a design project
On March 16, 1926, in a small snowy pasture in Auburn, Massachusetts an event was about to take place that should have changed the world — After countless laboratory experiments, Robert H. Goddard was about to launch the very first liquid fueled rocket.
Robert Goddard's First Liquid Fueled Rocket
On first inspection the launching frame seemed more like a child’s jungle gym than anything else I could imagine. The wide-open structure was about eight feet tall and nearly as wide and mounted within was the oddly configured rocket with its exhaust nozzle located near the top and a conical blast shield protecting the fuel tanks below. In many ways the design also reminds me of the Wright brothers’ first airplane that appeared to fly backwards by the modern eye with a small forward wing that might have been mistaken for its tail leading the way.
Goddard’s machine nevertheless took flight with an average altitude of 41 feet, speed of 60 mph, and it flew for a total of 2.5 seconds before landing 184 ft from its launching frame. This event should have been the “Kitty Hawk” of modern rocketry. What happened?
Goddard’s neighbors soon decided that having a such events close by was not a good idea, and with the backing of Charles Lindbergh and the Guggenheim family the inventor continued his countless experiments in Roswell, New Mexico. But Goddard was a secretive sort. And rather than using his resources to build an institution and a large team to carry the work forward, he instead built and tested almost everything himself — publishing very little about his progress and sharing none of his discoveries.
Meanwhile Wernher Von Braun in Germany and research teams at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena were unknowingly duplicating Goddard’s work, and soon others were building much larger and far more complex vehicles.
Robert H. Goddard
Goddard had come to understand the basic principles of liquid fueled rocketry, and he had invented many of the methods and formulas still in use today, yet his drive to maintain secrecy and control over the process meant that his work would soon be redone by others, and the originality of his work overtaken by teams of experts who documented and shared what they were learning.
Today Von Braun is considered the true father of modern spaceflight and is widely credited beyond anyone else for placing men on the moon, while Goddard’s achievements are considered a noteworthy dead end.
Although designers very much wish to ‘do it all’ there comes a time in every project when other people need to get involved.
Ken Ramsley
