"I realized that if something went wrong up there, things might go very badly down here."
Robert Goddard, a Massachusetts-born physicist, launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket on this date 100 years ago.
It was not an overly impressive flight. The rocket, fueled by gasoline and liquid oxygen, rose just 41 feet into the air, and the flight lasted 2.5 seconds before it struck ice and snow.
Nevertheless, this rocket, named "Nell," represented a historic achievement that would help launch the modern age of spaceflight. Three decades later, the first objects would begin to ride liquid-fueled rockets into space, followed shortly by humans. A little more than 40 years would pass before humans walked on the Moon.
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Source: Ars Technica
