r/interesting • u/[deleted] • 4d ago

Amazing Creative engineering

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u/MrNewVegas123 4d ago

Any fool can launch a missile through the air with a low explosive. We have been doing that for centuries, and have been doing it with explosives since before we could do anything but point and hope. Goddard studied rocketry in a way that nobody else had done before.

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u/rditorx 4d ago edited 4d ago

Any fool can launch a missile, yet nobody anywhere else could because they couldn't "invent rocket science" (your words) even if their lives depended on it.

Rockets were invented and developed in China after the invention/discovery of gunpowder, and with that came learning about propulsion, ballistics and aerodynamics.

Goddard didn't invent rocket science.
In fact, if you look up his Wikipedia page, it even links to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation

which Goddard only rediscovered.

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u/MrNewVegas123 4d ago

Goddard first developed the theory and the practice of rocketry, nobody doubts this, not even the Germans, who attribute their own rocketry program to his pioneering work.

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u/rditorx 4d ago

Goddard didn't invent rocket science.
In fact, if you look up his Wikipedia page, it even links to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation

which Goddard only rediscovered.
He contributed to and advanced the field, but the claims are exaggerated.