On October 5th, the “Father of the Space Age” Robert Goddard (1882-1945) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. During his lifetime he was ridiculed by the public and the press over his idea of constructing a space flight machine. In 1926, he launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket on a farm near Auburn, Mass. In 1935, his liquid-fueled rocket surpassed the speed of sound. Other developments included a steering apparatus for rocket machines, staged rockets to reach high altitudes, rocket fuel pumps, and a self-cooling rocket motor.
