“I shot an arrow in the air,
it fell to earth, I knew not where.”
Robert Goddard, from Massachusetts, went about fixing that. Not with arrows, or any other weapon, but with his own invention in 1926: the rocket.
Louis CK once complained about how good we have it. In particular, the people who annoyed him this time, were impatient with how long it takes a cell phone to make a call.
“Give it a second! It's going to space!”
Rockets not only have totally changed telecommunications, they've made space travel possible. Goddard's early experiments were out of a yard, and showed that a liquid-fueled rocket could go up a mile. Besides the altitude the liquid fuel is crucial, as well. Anyone can make a projectile.
Later on Goddard came up with the first means of stabilizing and controlling the flight of rockets. His technology made Apollo 11 possible. It made Sputnik a terrifying thing. It has cluttered the post-atmosphere Earth with satellites orbiting, precisely, to let us call people in a manner of seconds.
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