Rocket Pioneers

Robert H. Goddard is known as the ``Father of the Space Age''. He was the first person to invent a rocket that used a liquid fuel (made of hydrogen and oxygen) to power its engine.

Goddard worked for seventeen years to develop his rocket design. Then on 16th March 1926, at his Aunt Effies farm in Auburn, Massachusetts, USA, Robert Goddard's machine sucessfully achieved flight.
Goddard's Rocket

He wrote in his diary the next day,

It looked almost magical as [the rocket] rose ... as if it said
``I've been here long enough; I think I'll be going somewhere
else if you don't mind''

Goddard's (and basically all rockets since then) worked by blasting out a large amount of material from it's engine VERY QUICKLY!!. This pushes the rocket upwards at tremendous speeds.

Goddard's Rocket About ten years after Goddard's death, Sergi Korolev started to build powerful rockets for the Russian Space Programme. In 1957, he was able to launch the first ever artificial satellite called Sputnik-1.

But what sort of speeds do we need to get into space?

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