White Sands and the Early Days of the American Space Program

As we come to the fiftieth anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 flight, it is nice  to recall that Dr. Robert H. Goddard had predicted in a report that he wrote one hundred years ago in 1919 that it should be possible to reach the Moon by rocket.  Some of the earliest research in rocketry was done in and around Roswell, New Mexico by Dr. Goddard (1882-1945).  Goddard contributed greatly to the technology of rocketry, although the United States government did not seem to get fully behind this work until the years immediately prior to World War II.  By then, Goddard was near the end of his life, although he was rightfully credited for many fundamental discoveries in this area including the use of liquid fuel, patents for gyroscopic control systems, the use of vanes inside the rockets to assist control, the development of gimbal steering and the use of multiple rocket stages, among many others.