ByN.taVerlChristeuseu Script league Newspapers “The dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.” When in 1959 Congress ordered a gold medal stnick in recognition of Dr. Robert H. Goddard’s pioneering research in Rocketry. those words were inscribed on one side. They were spoken by Goddard himself just after I.he tum of the century as valedictorian at South High School in Worcester, Mass. – and they characterized his life as a scientist and inventor. He is being honored this week in connection with i11 the 25111 anniversary of the “space age” advent with the orblt of Russia’s Sputnik earth satellite Oct. 4, 1957 and ill the 100th anniversary of Goddard’s birth Oct. 5, 1882 in Worcester. The Smithsonian 1nstitution’s National Air and Space Museum is marking the space age milestone with an eight-month exhibit. ‘ At the National Aeronautics and Space administrations Goddard Space Flight Center at Greenbelt, Md. tnamed in recognition of Dr. Goddard’s contribution), lectures, programs, films, and publications are focusing on the rocket scientist’s achievements. Called the lather of modern rocket propulsion. Goddard quietly and persistently pursued research and rocket building while a professor of physics at Clark University at Worcester. His dream of space travel took shape as a 17-year-old boy. He didn’t live to see that accomplished the died Aug. 10, 1915). but made great strides toward the goal. His most powerful rocket travelled faster than the speed of sound and reached an altitude of almost two miles. Goddard was sickly as a boy and had tuberculosis in his early thirties. But he persisted and by 1926 built and tested successfully his first rocket, using liquid fuel. The flight of his primitive invention March 15 of that year at Auburn, Mass. has been compared with the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk as a feat epochal in history. Yet his efforts made little impression on government officials. Only through modest subsidies of the Smithsonian Institution and the Daniel Guggenheim Foundation was he able to sustain his devoted research and testing. He worked for the U.S. Navy in both World Wars, but in neither was the military interested in his rocket blueprints. 1t remained for his pioneering rocketry principles to come to life in the German V-2 missiles of War l1, including gyroscopic control. steering by means of vunes in the jet stream of the rocket motor, power-driven fuel pumps and other dcvices. Wcrnhcr von Braun. one ofthe German st-is-ntists who camo over to the Americans near the close of War ll. attributed the rocket principles “to your Dr. Goddard.” As early as 1914, Goddard had received two patents f one for a rocket using liquid fuel; the other for a twoor-three step rocket using solid fuel. His mathematical theories of rocket propulsion were outlined in a Smithsonian publication in 1920. His paper discussed the possibility of a rocket reaching the moon, which mrred a joumalistic controversy concerning its feasibility. Much ridicule came Goddard’s way and no doubt contributed to his avoidance of the public limelight through the years. Goddard was the first scientist who not only realized the pottentialities of missles and space flight but also contributed directly to bringing them to practical realization with his rocket-building and tests. The dedicated labors of this modest man went largely unrecognized in the U.S. until the dawn oi what is now called the RockeLs for defense and space exploration have become a multi-billiondollar industry in modern times. Claiming government infringements on Goddard’s various patents in rocket development, the Guggenheim Foundation and the scientists widow, Esther C. Goddard, tilcd a joint claim in 1951. Eventually, in June 1960, the litigation was quietly concluded with an administrative award of Sl million. The settlement gave the govemment the “rights to use over 2.00 of Goddard’s patents which,” said a NASA statement, “ctwer basic inventions in the field of rockets. guided missiles and space exploration.” Today, navigation in space no longer is idle fancy. No more do people betittle the lofty ideas nor the accomplishments of the man who envisioned space exploration. One hundred years after his birth, the late Dr. Robert H. Goddard finally is receiving the acclaim and the place in history he earned.