Robert Goddard and Space Travel.

Robert Goddard's first trailblazing experiments in rocketry, the initial steps toward space exploration, were conducted in the 1910s. While a professor of physics at Clark University in Massachusetts, Goddard designed and tested almost every element of modern rockets. During 1915 and 1916 he experimented with rockets fueled by solid chemical propellants but found this means of propulsion unsatisfactory. Prior to his experiments with solid chemical rockets, Goddard was already contemplating the possibilities afforded by liquid propellants. In July 1914 the U.S. Patent Office issued Goddard two patents for "Rocket Apparatus," which contained the essential features of rockets used for late-twentieth-century space travel: liquid propellants that could sustain much higher thrust than solid propellants and a nozzle and combustion chamber configuration.

A Military Rocket.

In a 25 July 1915 letter Goddard wrote the secretary of the navy requesting that the navy consider developing a rocket...