Robert Hutchings GODDARD
GIANT ROCKET SOON READY FOR TEST

Professor Robert Goddard's Rocket, Which is Expected to Travel 70 Miles in Air, is Ready

WORCHESTER, Mass., - An actual test of Professor Robert Goddard's rocket, which it is claimed, can travel vertically seventy miles into the air will be made here shortly. The time and place have not yet been definitely decided upon.

The rocket, it is said, is practically ready to be tried out. It weighs thirty pounds, twenty-five of which is highly explosive. A sufficiently large rocket would hit the moon, it is claimed.

Professor Goddard started his invention during the war and has been at work on it since. His laboratory at that time was carefully guarded by soldiers, as the rocket was expected to provide the army with a terrible new engine of destruction capable of shooting two hundred or more miles.

The Smithsonian Institute and the War Department provided a working fund of more than $5,000. Clark Collage, where Professor Goddard is head of the department of physics, gave him a leave of absence. He also received assistance from Worchester Polytechnic Institute.

The propulsion power of the rocket lies in the internal combustion engine fed either by finely pulverized smokeless powder or liquid explosive at regular intervals by clock work. The rocket has an outer cylindrical shell of thin metal. The combustion chamber opens into a nozzle, each exploding cartridge giving the rocket a further kick into space.

The Ogden Standard-Examiner
Ogden, Utah
September 28, 1920

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