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Robert Goddard, the father of American rocketry, is credited with developing the first liquid fueled rockets, with gyroscope three-axis control providing steerable thrust. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is named for him. After World War II, Werner von Braun , and 1,600 German scientists, surrendered to the United States in Operation Paperclip, stating: "I myself, and everybody you see here, have decided to go West ... We knew that we had created a new means of warfare ... We felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to...

The "Father of Modern Rocketry" was American scientist Robert H. Goddard . He ushered in the "Space Age" by creating the world's first liquid-fueled rocket. Goddard was born in 1882 and raised Episcopalian. He wrote of a pivotal moment when he was 17-years-old, after having read H.G. Wells' 1897 science-fiction novel War of the Worlds: "On the afternoon of October 19, 1899, I climbed a tall cherry tree and, armed with a saw which I still have, and a hatchet, started to trim the dead limbs from the cherry tree. ... It was one of the quiet, colorful afternoons of...

Watching the Moon landing 50 years ago from his comfortable Paris home, Yves Beon could barely contain himself at the spectacle unfolding on TV. Dozens of white-shirted scientists and engineers at the Apollo Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, were on their feet, many waving flags, cheering at a triumph that was enhancing American prestige and unleashing an ocean of apple-pie patriotism. Yet Beon, a hero of the French Resistance, was spitting venom at the screen that night and, had he been alive to see last week’s documentaries repeating the footage of Neil Armstrong’s ‘giant leap for mankind’, his reaction...

You may recall that back in the early years of the Age of Obama NASA decided to go in a new direction. No longer satisfied with their mission to explore space, they decided to pursue the much sexier goal of promoting Muslim self esteem - because nothing is as important as self esteem.Since NASA was exiting the rocket business in order to set up a public relations agency, they subcontracted the outer space division to private investors handpicked by bureaucrats. Alas, CHANGE is difficult and the NASA switch proved to be no exception; our outsourced space program has recently experienced...

On April 14th, 1970, a new crater was carved into the surface of the Moon: How do we know it’s new? Because we made it. That’s the impact scar of the third stage of the Saturn V rocket (technically designated S-IVB) that carried Apollo 13 to — but sadly, not on — the Moon. Earlier missions had placed seismic instruments on the lunar surface to measure if the Moon had any activity. They found it did, and in fact several moonquakes were big enough that had you been standing there, you would have felt them quite strongly (and probably been...

A BAG of cocaine has been found in a Space Shuttle hangar - sparking a Nasa investigation.

New imagery of old Apollo touchdown spots, from the European Space Agency's (ESA) SMART-1 probe, might put to rest conspiratorial thoughts that U.S. astronauts didn't go the distance and scuff up the lunar landscape. NASA carried out six piloted landings on the Moon in the time period 1969 through 1972... Bernard Foing, Chief Scientist of the ESA Science Program... told SPACE.com that the SMART-1 orbiter circling the Moon has already covered the Apollo 11, 16, 17 landing sites, as well as spots where the former Soviet Union's Luna 16 and Luna 20 automated vehicles plopped down... Foing said that each...

Is the right responsible for inspiring murder, such as that of late-term abortionist George Tiller by Kansas native Scott Roeder?  Some certainly seem to think so.  For instance, the Friday before last Bill O'Reilly had as a guest on his show Joan Walsh, the editor of leftist news site Salon.com.  She appeared because she had criticized O'Reilly for engaging in what she called a "jihad" against Tiller.  Her thesis is that O'Reilly and, presumably, the rest of us who are passionately pro-life are culpable Tiller's death. Of course, this isn't a novel idea among the left.  If there is any...

Wernher von Braun in his MSFC office, with models of the rockets he helped develop in the background. (credit: NASA) Remembering Wernher von Braun by Anthony Young Monday, July 10, 2006 June 16th passed with virtually no mention of one of the greatest names in the exploration of space. On that date in 1977, Dr. Wernher von Braun passed away. He was admired and loved by many he worked with during projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, yet vilified by others because of his wartime efforts developing the V-2 for the Third Reich. He profoundly influenced the course of history...

by Jeffrey F. Bell Honolulu HI (SPX) May 21, 2006 One of my earliest columns for SpaceDaily criticized the frequent use of inappropriate and misleading historical analogies by promoters of outer space. Since then, the problem has only gotten worse. One of the most persistent analogy abusers is X-Prize and Rocket Racing League promoter Peter Diamandis. His whole career as a space activist is based on the idea that rocket prizes and rocket races can be a major driver of an independent non-governmental space industry. In turn, this concept is based on an erroneous view of the Golden Age of...

New NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin has decided to replace about 20 senior space agency officials by mid-August in the first stage of a broad agency shake-up. The departures include the two leaders of the human spaceflight program, which is making final preparations to fly the space shuttle for the first time in more than two years. Senior NASA officials and congressional and aerospace industry sources said yesterday that Griffin wants to clear away entrenched bureaucracy, and build a less political and more scientifically oriented team to implement President Bush's plan to return humans to the moon by 2020 and...

In... 1970, a Washington gossip columnist found herself seated at a dinner party next to rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. "One of the most fascinating men in the world has just moved to town," she gushed to her readers afterward. "The rocket genius is a brilliant conversationalist, extremely handsome and socially charming." It might seem odd to judge the mastermind of the Apollo program's Saturn V launch vehicle -- and, earlier, the German V-2 -- by his savoir faire. Yet Dr. von Braun's gift for talk and salesmanship, together with his technical skill and managerial prowess, were indispensable to his...

  Wernher von Braun     1912 - 1977  “It’s not exactly rocket science, you know.”  The cliche implies that rocket science is the epitome of something that is difficult, obscure, and abstruse; something comprehensible only by the brainiest of the smart.  Names that qualify for the title “father of rocket science” include Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, and von Braun.  But Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was mostly a visionary and chalkboard theorist, and Robert Goddard only targeted the upper atmosphere for his projects; he was also secretive and suspicious of others to a fault.  Of the three, and any others that could be listed,...

Once again, it is back to the future for NASA. In 1952, Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who spearheaded America's first two decades of space efforts, laid out a step-by-step blueprint of space exploration, starting with putting a satellite in orbit around Earth. The next steps in von Braun's blueprint read like NASA's achievements of the past four decades: launching astronauts into orbit, sending astronauts to the Moon, the space shuttle, a space station. Only the order was changed when President John F. Kennedy made the push for sending people to the Moon. That goal was originally supposed...