Not a common person This small, private act of grief is also a window into who Esther Goddard was: meticulous, devoted, and fiercely in control of the narrative. Because while Robert Goddard is remembered today as the father of modern rocketry—the pioneer who launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926, from a…

Making gAIns Clark does the hard—and human—work of determining how AI fits into its academic universe The robot gazes straight ahead from the corner of Clark’s Robotics Lab, home to the Laboratory for Intelligent Perceptual Systems, where it sits on a worktable surrounded by wires, tools, and parts. This isn’t Star Wars’ C-3PO—but it represents a…

“Even though the release was pulled, the rocket did not rise at first, but the flame came out, and there was a steady roar. After a number of seconds it rose, slowly until it cleared the frame, and then at express-train speed, curving over to the left, and striking the ice and snow, still going…