Robert Goddard and the Experimental Foundations of Liquid Propulsion: Rocket Development, First Edition, 1948

Robert Goddard

First Edition

Robert H. Goddard’s experimental record of liquid fuel rocket development from 1929 to 1941, published posthumously in 1948 as American military and scientific institutions were consolidating the technologies that would shape guided missiles and spaceflight. Edited by Esther C. Goddard and G. Edward Pendray, the volume organizes twelve years of research conducted at Camp Devens, Clark University, and Roswell, New Mexico, following Goddard’s 1926 launch of the first successful liquid propelled rocket. Its test reports document the engineering problems that occupied his mature work: fuel injection, combustion chamber design, liquid oxygen handling, regenerative cooling, gyroscopic stabilization, parachute recovery, turbopumps, and the construction of increasingly powerful motors.

Goddard, Robert H. Rocket Development: Liquid Fuel Rocket Research, 1929–1941. New York: Prentice Hall, 1948. Edited by Esther C. Goddard and G. Edward Pendray. Foreword by Harry F. Guggenheim. First edition. 291 pages. 8vo. Illustrated, original dark blue cloth lettered and ruled in gilt, no dust jacket The contents proceed chronologically from tests at Camp Devens for improving liquid fuel rocket motor efficiency through the first New Mexico experiments, subsequent work at Clark University, pressure fed flight tests, ten inch motors, nitrogen pressurized rockets, and the later P Series program. Individual entries record apparatus, propellant flow, combustion pressures, nozzle dimensions, control mechanisms, failures, modifications, static tests, and flights. Illustrated with technical diagrams and halftone plates, including Goddard working on a liquid fuel rocket in his Roswell laboratory in November 1935.

The book preserves Goddard’s method as a sequence of construction, testing, failure analysis, and revision rather than as a retrospective account of completed inventions. His use of gasoline and liquid oxygen required solutions to unstable combustion, chamber overheating, pressurization, ignition, and directional control; the experiments recorded here show those systems developing through repeated changes in injectors, pumps, valves, gyroscopes, vanes, and recovery equipment. Esther C. Goddard, who photographed experiments, maintained records, and promoted her husband’s work after his death in 1945, prepared the research for publication with G. Edward Pendray. The resulting volume appeared three years after Goddard’s death and before liquid propulsion became publicly associated with the American satellite and lunar programs. Light rubbing and scattered spotting to cloth; minor wear at spine ends and corners; toning and scattered foxing or staining to endpapers and page edges; binding sound. Overall good condition. A technical record of the experimental program through which Goddard developed liquid propulsion, powered flight control, and rocket recovery before the institutional expansion of American missile and space research.

Item #23665

Price: $280.00