New York Times editorial (falsely) reports rockets can’t fly in space

Robert Goddard grew up literally with his thoughts in the clouds. At 17, climbing a cherry tree, he looked up at the sky above and was mesmerized. His life’s work after that became finding a way to get as high as he could into that sky. At 37 he published his seminal piece A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, creating the scientific basis for rocket flight. A day after his publication, his work was savaged in a New York Times editorial.

On this day, January 13, 1920 an unsigned New York Times editorial called Goddard’s plan to carry instruments on a rocket to study space “a severe strain on credulity.” Among their problems with the proposal was the possibility of flight in a vacuum – the Times falsely assumed that a lack of air will give the rocket nothing to react against, making acceleration impossible.

Goddard was only slightly more appreciated by colleagues than by the media. Although he was acclaimed by famed aviator Charles Lindbergh and had a longstanding contract with the Navy, he had limited resources to develop his work. German development of what became the V-2 rocket quickly outpaced his own results, and Soviet spies got a hold of one of his reports, greatly helping the development of their own rocket program.