July 17, 1999
On the day you were born, the universe was already ancient beyond measure — and yet, in all those billions of years, it had never once...
Rockets and Robert Goddard
Birthday · July 17, 1999
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published July 17, 1999. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Robert H. Goddard, one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry, was born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1882. As a 16 year old, Goddard read H.G. Wells' science fiction classic "War Of The Worlds" and dreamed of space flight. By 1926 he had designed, built, and launched the world's first liquid fuel rocket. During his career he was ridiculed by the press for suggesting that rockets could be flown to the Moon, but he kept up his experiments in rocketry supported in part by the Smithsonian Institution and championed by Charles Lindbergh. Pictured above in 1937 in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico, Goddard examines a nose cone and parachute from one of his test rockets. Widely recognized as a gifted experimenter and engineering genius, his rockets were many years ahead of their time. He died in 1945 holding over 200 patents in rocket technology. A liquid fuel rocket constructed on principles developed by Goddard landed humans on the Moon in 1969.