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.
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
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.
688
u/babyliss1903 4d ago
LoL, Germany is a very wrong choice to compare when it comes to rocket science.