{"id":27552,"date":"2026-03-19T11:43:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T15:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/?post_type=story&p=27552"},"modified":"2026-04-01T15:08:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T19:08:06","slug":"clark-alum-reignites-the-legacy-of-robert-goddard-in-presentation","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2026\/03\/19\/clark-alum-reignites-the-legacy-of-robert-goddard-in-presentation\/","title":{"rendered":"Clark alum reignites the legacy of Robert Goddard in presentation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One hundred years \u2014 and one day \u2014 after Robert Goddard made the first successful launch of a liquid-fueled rocket, the enduring impact and inspiration of his historic accomplishment was recalled by a fellow Clark alumnus and retired NASA employee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a March 17 presentation on the Clark campus, John Emond \u201974 harkened to Goddard\u2019s March 16, 1926, launch from snow-covered Ward Farm in nearby Auburn. The hand-fashioned rocket, nicknamed Nell, soared 41 feet into the sky, remained airborne for 2.5 seconds, and landed in a cabbage patch 184 feet away. The numbers were modest; their reverberations are still being felt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emond took the audience back to the scientist\u2019s boyhood, recounting the famous story of Goddard climbing his family\u2019s cherry tree and peering up into the starry sky, imagining the scenarios for space travel posed by his favorite fantasy authors, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. He descended that tree with a sense of purpose that would feed his lifelong efforts to reach the cosmos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCreating a fantasy novel is one thing, but turning vision into reality requires a break from current understanding, a dramatic paradigm shift, a movement from known to unknown,\u201d Emond said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Goddard\u2019s paradigm shift came with its share of challenges. When he referenced the possibility of a moonshot in his seminal 1919 essay \u201cA Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes,\u201d the press tabbed him as \u201cMoon Man\u201d and mercilessly mocked his ambitions, Emond said. The New York Times in 1920 famously derided Goddard\u2019s contention that a rocket could travel in the vacuum of space, insisting he lacked the basic knowledge \u201cladled out daily in high school.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Despite the public scorn, the Clark physicist persevered, and turned his vision into reality \u2014 the ultimate vindication, he noted.\u00a0From that humble launch, Goddard would continue with his experiments, moving them to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and then Roswell, New Mexico, and earning the backing of Charles Lindbergh, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institute, among others.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Goddard contributed his rocketry expertise in service to the war effort, both in World War I and II, with Emond noting the \u201cdichotomy in technology\u201d between the great benefits offered to humankind and the potential for great destruction. Among the former, he cited Cospas-Sarsat, an international satellite-based search-and-rescue system that since its formation in 1982 has been responsible for saving over 63,000 lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emond enjoyed a 29-year NASA career, first at the\u00a0Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and later at NASA HQ in Washington, D.C., holding positions as a contract specialist, policy analyst, and program manager until his retirement in 2011.\u00a0Throughout his presentation, Emond took care to juxtapose the famous photo of Goddard (taken by Robert\u2019s wife, Esther) standing next to his launch frame with images highlighting the technological advances in space travel over the succeeding decades\u2014among them the Apollo 11 moonshot, the International Space Station, and the upcoming Artemis lunar mission. Goddard\u2019s work, he said, must be viewed as a continuum that has informed all of these later achievements, by NASA as well as by private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following his lecture, Emond presented Clark President David Fithian with a special certificate from BioServe Space Technologies, a Center within the Ann and HJ Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences department at the University of Colorado Boulder that has designed, built, and flown hundreds of microgravity life science research experiments and hardware on over 110 spaceflight missions. BioServe\u2019s gift to Clark includes a flag and pin that were flown to the International Space Station, the latter on a Falcon 9 rocket \u2014 a descendant of Nell\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJohn Emond \u201974 (right) presented President David Fithian with a gift from BioServe Space Technologies: a flag and pin that were flown to the International Space Station.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One hundred years after Robert Goddard made the first successful launch of a liquid-fueled rocket, the enduring impact and inspiration of his historic accomplishment were recalled by a fellow Clark alumnus and retired NASA employee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":27553,"template":"","meta":{"story_color":"var(--clarku-color-blue)","story_headerImg":27553,"section_label":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[223,227,239],"displayed_author":[235],"featured":[494],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-27552","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clark-community","category-science-technology","category-worcester-world","displayed_author-jim-keogh","featured-secondary"],"yoast_head":"\n
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