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Michael Carrafiello, Professor of History, Miami University

The first modern rocket launched 100 years ago, beginning a century of both innovations and challenges for spaceflight

Robert Goddard, considered the father of modern rocketry, standing with a rocket in 1935. Esther Goddard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Apollo 11 first landed astronauts on the Moon in 1969, but the journey to the lunar surface actually began 43 years before, in snowy Massachusetts.

Exactly 100 years ago, on March 16, 1926, Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket. Liquid-fueled rockets would eventually provide the power to send humans to the Moon. Still, Goddard’s vehicle was small, flew for only 42 seconds, reached a height of a mere 184 feet and sustained damage that created more doubters than believers in the prospects for human space flight.

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