[MUSIC] Robert Hutchings Goddard was an American engineer, professor, physicist, and inventor known as the Godfather of modern rocketry. He's credited with creating and building the world's first liquid fueled rocket, which was successfully launched on March 16th, 1926. Yes, we are actually quickly approaching 100 years since the first rocket launch from US soil. So how does one mark such an occasion? [MUSIC] Welcome to T-Minus Deep Space from N2K Networks. I'm Maria Varmazis. Goddard's name is one that many in the space industry are very familiar with. By 1915, his pioneering work had dramatically improved the efficiency of the solid fueled rocket, signaling the era of modern rocketry and innovation. And I spoke with Charles Slotkin from The Wonder Mission about the centennial celebrations of Robert Goddard's pioneering work. [MUSIC] I first became introduced to space as a very young kid, probably five or seven years old, certainly watching the space race. And the wonderful world of Disney that featured Verne von Braun talking about going to the moon in 1959, and we're going to go there in 10 years. And sure enough, we did. And watching all these incredible achievements made me feel that anything really was possible. And I sort of grew into a relatively hopeful, positive person. I think a lot of that came from the incredible achievements of mankind, and the incredible work that they did, and the incredible work that they did to make sure that people could do, and attending like some of the great world's fairs. You saw the promise of the future enabled by technology. But as fate had it, I ended up going to Clark University for an undergraduate degree. Knew a bit about Goddard, had bought a book about inventors when I was like 11 years old and a little bit more kismet. But I soon realized that Goddard had not only gone to Clark to get his graduate degree and PhD, but also had taught there as head of the physics department, and did all of his research and all of his fabrication of the first rockets for there. And Clark is in Worcester, Massachusetts for our listeners who don't know. Indeed. The second biggest city in New England no one knows about. I know about it, Daniel, but yes. And it was in its time, especially even Goddard's time, it really was kind of the Silicon Valley of the Industrial Revolution. But that's a whole other story. But the year that I arrived at Clark to look at Clark, it was the year they dedicated the new Robert Goddard Library. And at the ribbon cutting was astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who cut the ribbon. And the reason he was there was his father Eugene Aldrin, senior was a student and a friend of Goddard's. Wow, I did not know that. That's interesting. And inadvertently Buzz two months later goes on Apollo 11, takes with him a miniature version of Goddard's autobiography. Ask NASA to leave it on the moon. They said, can't do that. But he comes back to earth, flies to Worcester, and he presents us to Goddard's widow, Esther Goddard, who's still alive at the time. So it's the only book that's been on the moon. And she graciously donated to Clark before her passing. So it's in the Clark archives. All right, I'm making a road trip to Clark pretty soon. Yeah, that's really neat. It is pretty cool. So somehow my life and Goddard's life has sort of become intertwined. And I read about in 2021 that the Goddard's house was about to be destroyed. That the vacant land next to it had been sold off already for the development of ranch houses. And the house was 24 hours away from being sold to a developer to ultimately be destroyed. And in a spontaneous, crazy moment, I told a realtor to buy it. I just knew that humanity couldn't let this happen. You know, when we first, as we become an interplanetary society and people look back to, we're the first steps off the earth that really started with Robert Goddard at his, at Effie's Cabbage Farm. And how could we let that be destroyed? So that's kind of how a lot of this came to fruition. And then I ended up getting a VIP pass down to the SLS first test flight and drove down there and stopped at a lot of NASA facilities and really enjoyed telling them, telling them about, you know, my Goddard connection. And they treated us quite well and showed us behind the scenes. But upon visiting Kitty Hawk, I was very impressed with what they did to honor their first flight and read about their centennial in 2003. It was like tens of thousands of people came and the president of the United States spoke, the one bombers flew over, and I got in the car to drive home. I started to do the math and it's like, oh my God, in 1,100 days, it'll be the 100th anniversary of mankind's first rocket launch, first, first reach to the stars. And since then, I've been really possessed with spreading the word, you know, locally and nationally, that this is this wonderful opportunity to not only celebrate Goddard's legacy, and the spin that we've put on it that really seems to resonate is not only will this space centennial celebrate Goddard's incredible vision and achievements, but simultaneously, and I think even more importantly, much more importantly, it's a chance to honor and elevate today's and tomorrow's Goddards. You know, now more than ever, where science under attack, let's use this centennial opportunity to honor and elevate and celebrate our scientists and educators and engineers and innovators and our students and the future generations who dream big. Absolutely. Your life story is just absolutely incredible how much it is intertwined with the Goddard legacy as well. I'm curious, what are your plans for the centennial? I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of foot. There's a lot of foot and yet not enough by half, but we're getting momentum. One of the goals, I think, of the centennial opportunity and as much as I want to celebrate and elevate my alma mater, Clark, and our local institutions like WPI in the town of Auburn and Worcester, Mass, it's really important for me to help spread the word and help kind of give a vision of how this can be reimagined so that every school around the country, every science museum, every aerospace company can kind of use the centennial opportunity and leverage it in their own unique and creative way. So in some cases, success to us would be if a small school in Kansas found a way to celebrate the centennial in some cool way and knew nothing about us or nothing about Worcester, that would be terrific. So in some ways, it's much more of a movement of trying to get people to find ways to make it their own. We're a nonprofit. We're not looking to monetize it or own it or gate it. It's sort of more open software, so we're really trying to provide ideas and resources. And I've been working with Clark. We've been actually scanning all of Goddard's best archive photographs taken by Esther Goddard, no less. Well, we should talk about her on a whole other show. She's amazing. Yeah, she sounds amazing. She's amazing. So we've actually been using AI to clean up a lot of the old photographs and sharpen them, and then we'll provide them to the general public with permission from Clark or an electronic press kit so they can kind of say, "Gee, how can, here's some tools and resources that we can apply to use this story to inspire, especially the next generation, the Mars generation. My grandkids are going to have Mars in their vocabulary, whether we like it or not." Fingers crossed, right? I hope so. Well, if China says they're going, it's just inevitable. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about your backdrop. Is that Goddard's house behind you? That's Goddard's house behind me, so it's either... It's a very New England Pala. Yeah, yeah. It's great. It's fascinating. It's a 200-year-old home, but it's multi-generational, meaning that Goddard was born in the second floor bedroom, but it was his great-great-grandparent's house. Wow. He has deep roots. I didn't know that. Yeah, stayed with a family, real Yankee family for sure. But we've been renovating it and trying to bring it back to its original grandeur. And rather than it be a lot of historical houses or shrines, Paul Revere sat here, someone so did this, we're really trying to reimagine the historic house of the future. So it's more like pointing to what Goddard enabled. So in the room behind me, which was Goddard's dining room, we have a 90-inch monitor on the wall, and we play web telescope images to remind people that Goddard, not only... People that carried the torch, not only got us off the planet, but allowed us to explore the most deepest reaches of our universe and understanding of our world. And it was assembled at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Yes, it was. Yes. Which is very cool. Yeah. Which is very cool. But the house has been wonderful. It's all-consuming. We're actually... I have people over there today giving us a quote to remove the lead paint that's on the outside of the house. Very New England thing. Yeah. One New England house doesn't have lead paint there, right? Yeah. Get it ship-shaped for the centennial. Yeah. But we've been really wonderfully embraced by the neighbors have been terrific. The community has been wonderful. And so many people don't know who Robert Goddard is. I have this great George Lucas documentary that he did in 2007. It's just a collage of young people around the country whose Robert Goddard, no idea. And even in Worcester, Mass, even in his birthplace, people under 40 don't know who Robert Goddard is. So in some ways, it's sort of fun to discover this unbelievable genius and visionary that was so far ahead of his times. I mean, that's what's really inspired me the most about Goddard because I'm much more interested in the future than history. Yeah. But for example, Goddard was researching solar energy in 1909. And he wrote articles about the possibility of collecting solar energy in space. This is before he even built a rocket and transmitting it to Earth to power- We're still trying to crack that nut. Yes. That's amazing. Yeah. He also wrote about ion propulsion in 1914, which NASA does use in some of its technology. And what was the other one? Oh, SpinLaunch. You know the company SpinLaunch? Yes. Oh, yes. We do know SpinLaunch. Yes, indeed. Right. So for those people that know of the famous Goddard cherry tree story, when he's envisioning this possibility of building a device to take you to the stars at 17, he goes on to describe how perhaps some device with a centrifugal force applied correctly could provide the propulsion. And I always thought that was nuts. When I first read it, it's like, "Geez, he was a brilliant guy, but that wasn't his best idea." Can't win them all, right? And then a few years later, I read about SpinLaunch and see what they're doing. And it's exactly what he had proposed without even understanding what it would take to get to space, despite the fact that New York Times, but he wrote his first theoretical article for a few years. And I think it's a great article for, I think, Smithsonian about the possibility of getting a project out of space. The New York Times wrote that he obviously doesn't know the most basic principles that every physics high school student knows. You can have propulsion or a vacuum. And two days before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, the Times printed this tiny little retraction that we regret this era. So we're hoping for the centennial to somehow reconnect with the New York Times and say, "Maybe you should write a little better retraction for some Robert Downs' 100th anniversary." I think time has definitely proven his vision. And as you're recounting so much of what he planned, it reminds me of Da Vinci. And Da Vinci's great blueprints and sketches that centuries later were still, I mean, he predicted the helicopter and things like that. I mean, I'm summarizing poorly, but just, yeah, it's just amazing that these visionaries like Goddard, you know, we're still trying to figure out the things that they had dreamt of, but they were definitely grounded in proper science. And it's quite amazing. So to motivate today and tomorrow's thinkers and to dream big like Goddard, but also, I mean, I guess, like, I really appreciate that you're saying that you're especially looking forward and towards the future. And I'm thinking, you know, for people who would be young people who are attending, maybe next year's big event, I have an eight-year-old, so I'm thinking of her specifically. What are the things that you would want like my kid to come away with from an event like this and from this milestone? Well, I think the thing that sticks with me the most, and especially, I mean, what we're doing is somewhat challenging. We're self-funding most of what we're doing. And, you know, there's a lot of roadblocks. Everyone's busy with a lot of other challenges going on in the world today. But I think that the thing that carries through to me, and I hope I can transmit to other, especially younger people, is dreaming big. You know, the idea that dreaming big and with that goes perseverance and persistence. Folks like Goddard mostly failed. Most of its rockets blew up. Most of his colleagues laughed at him, called him the moon man. But the power of dreaming big and not expecting it to happen quickly or overnight, and sticking with it, and working against the odds, and that dogged persistence moving forward. I read this wonderful book Space Barons that talks about Musk and Branson, etc. And they talk about Jeff Bezos' love and appreciation of Goddard. And as much as it was for his technological brilliance and visionary brilliance, it was the fact it was his dogged slow persistence of moving forward incrementally. And to the point that he named Blue Argent's first rocket is named Goddard. And according to the book, Jeff named his youngest son's middle name as Goddard in honor of Robert Goddard. We haven't verified that with Jeff yet. We'll do a fact check later on that one. I did not know that. But I think the power of a dream, you know, and he was really inspired by science fiction. He was reading War of the Worlds is really kind of the one of the main catalysts of kind of getting him thinking about traveling to Mars, etc. So, yeah, I think I think dreaming persistence and hope, and I think goes goes a long way. And it's, you know, there's a, you know, a world now has a lot of immediate gratification that, you know, if you don't get quick results, you move on to something else. And I think that there's some of that Yankee determination that goes with it. And sometimes maybe it's a lost value. We'll be right back. I'm going to get a little regional with you only because I normally wouldn't do this because we are, our show is global and I try not to get to regional. But since you and I are both in Massachusetts and Goddard, he got his start here. Although famously he moved out, he went to New Mexico after, and my producer is in New Mexico and I'm sure she's shouting at me right now. Don't forget that part. I know. I always thought it was very interesting. I grew up in Massachusetts. My family is not from here originally, but I grew up, I'm a mass native. I did, I never heard much about Goddard growing up or his connection to our state at all. And I think even now I don't think that's very well known here, which is a shame. Yeah, I'm glad you agree. Cause I'm just thinking, I'm just going, I'm a lifelong space nerd. And I think when I found out that he had a local connection, I was shocked. I, you know, I thought of Goddard Space Center in Maryland. I thought of him in New Mexico. I did not even know that he was from here. I don't know if there's a why behind this question. I'm just going, what the heck? Cause that's my reaction. Yeah. I mean, like, like all of these geniuses, they're imperfect. And Goddard was very secretive. He was a, evidently, he was a lovely gregarious person. He wasn't your, you know, your prototypical, like, you know, quiet engineer who didn't know how to relate to people. He was class president, class valedictorian, even in high school. But I think part of it, he wouldn't collaborate. And despite his, his mentors and his sponsors were Charles Lindbergh, who introduced the Guggenheim family and Harry Guggenheim and Charles Lindbergh literally begged him on many occasions, please collaborate, especially with the emerging group that became JPL in California. And short of those, you know, someone from that early group came and visited him in Roswell and they had a lovely time and a lovely dinner. But when it came to getting specifics, and part of that maybe came from this kind of Yankee value of ownership. I mean, there were 14 patent offices on Main Street in Worcester at that time. His father was an inventor, had some patents. So there was a little bit of a, of that kind of an ownership of having, having control of their own destiny. So I think that might have, that might have been part of it. You know, he never got to see, you know, one of his rockets go to space. But his wife Esther did this. This is a wonderful picture of her watching the moon landing in 1969 in the Goddard House. But I think part of it was being lambasted by the New York Times, you know, being mocked by his colleagues and, hey, moon man, where are we going to hit the moon? You know, the whole way. I think it just kind of became, you know, much more reclusive about, about his work. Wow. Yeah. He got burned by it. It sounds like it. Yeah. A little bit. And who could blame him? Yeah. And yet NASA was still using a lot of his patented schematics in modern rockets to the point that in, in the 60s, Esther Goddard and the Guggenheims fought for the patent rights from the United States government and NASA and won a $1 million award because they were, but it's because his technology and his patents were still viable and being used for modern, modern rocket design. That's so interesting. I think people who are in aerospace know him, but I think people who are maybe more in the space community, not nearly as well. And that is very interesting to me. And, and again, growing up in a state that's very proud of its education that I never learned about him here. It just kind of blows, continues to blow my mind a little bit. And that's hopefully something that we will, we will all change, especially with this anniversary coming up. Well, that's really become our mission to really like I've sort of been shocked, but I also think that's what energizes us is that Worcester, you know, Worcester helped us in the space age. Auburn was the site of the world's first rocket launch. Clark and WPI and Goddard's South High School was inspired by these two wonderful teachers and really made a difference in his life. And they really don't scream their, their, their ownership to the sky. So we're really trying to reinvigorate them. It's like, to me, it's like low hanging fruit is just you had a, you had an incredible role in ushering in mankind's exploration of the universe. And you just have to own it, you know, Levenster owns Johnny Appleseed. They sure do. And we're hoping that Worcester certainly will embrace that. To that end, one of the most successful initiatives that we've had to date, and I'm not sure if I shared this with any of my materials is something we, we've just started to implement called the National Space Trail. Yes, I should have asked you about that. I saw that on your website. Tell me about that. Yeah. So my background's in multimedia production, immersive environments, but 20 or 30 years ago, I produced the official video for the Boston Freedom Trail from the National Park Service. Which is amazing, by the way. That's, that's fantastic. Wow. Yeah. And it was wonderfully successful because you could take people very efficiently to all the different sites on the Freedom Trail, and you could take them behind the scenes and go places no visitor could ever go. I got to climb into the Old North Church with a 50 pound video camera and on these repeat ladders and show people kind of why it was so significant. But as I started to kind of map out in my mind all these wonderful things that happened in Worcester. So he's born in this house. He goes to this high school and is inspired by these two teachers. He goes to WPI, blows up the chem labs. So they move him to the standalone building. He goes to Clark and gets his PhD and works on his theories of designing a liquid propulsion rocket. Goes to Auburn and fires off the world's first liquid propulsion rocket. And it was like, gee, that's, that's kind of a nice roadmap. So I started to map that out as, started out as the Worcester Space Trail, so to speak. And in New Mexico has the equivalent to have a New Mexico Space Trail. And then one of my wonderful friends and advisors as we're sort of brainstorming about this like three or four years ago said, why stop there? Why, why, why not make it the National Space Trail? And so we started to really kind of put a, you know, put a more focus on this and create a kind of a virtual and physical roadmap of all the sites around the United States that were seminal, not only to the history of space exploration, but also the continuation of scientific space exploration and and to broaden that also to science and space inspiration. So include observatories and planetariums, etc. And we've actually started the, the first site is actually live in front of the Goddard's house is this wonderful very cool sculpture. And there's a QR code that takes you to national space trail.org that has has has some very simple content at the time that's going to broaden and expand but actually has a little bit of a summary of each of the different sites that were sent out to that. And that is, we've actually fundraised, we had a wonderful local fundraising effort, we fundraised enough for schools that can't afford their own space trail marker like Old South High, which is now the Goddard School of Science and Technology. And we're hoping to be complete in the next probably four or five months. And we're hoping so that'll be ready for the centennial. And we're hoping once that's complete to expand it into Massachusetts. And we need to do more homework and then expand it nationally. And you know this is something that'll probably live, you know, outlast my lifetime and hopefully we'll get more people to kind of embrace it but, you know, it's it's really been, it's sort of gone viral in terms of how wonderful and cool it is. In a moment of wild, wild enthusiasm the other day I said, once that's done, and maybe I'll be alive to see it. But then we need to move on and create the galactic space trail. There you go. And have it start to be a roadmap of mankind's first Goddard's launch, you know, Sputnik. Yep. Moon, Mars, beyond. There you go. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you know, some sort of a cool VR or AR where you can kind of see how far we've come. So I was looking at the map of all the sites on the national space trail and I was thinking to myself, I know a lot of homeschool families or families that do like van trips over the summer. This would be so fun to do with the kids and like an RV or something. I go across the country visit these sites because it really does cover all like all of the US. It's really amazing. All right. And then I realized getting to a lot of sites is also very expensive. Like I went to Wallops Island. Then you go, just pop over to Wallops Island. It was like four hours later I'm there. And to be able to have kids be able to go to all these places. Like JPL has this incredible virtual tour that's already in the can. So just plugging people into all those places and not have to physically travel. Stay in a hotel with a bunch of kids. So it just gives people a lot of options of people who normally couldn't physically make it to all these places. That's a great idea. That's so great. And opens up. And again, for people who like me are going to discover things are in their backyard, then just go pop around if you can and go see it. I think that's so exciting. Charles, you've given me a bunch of ideas of things to do with my kids. So thank you for that. You're welcome. Thank you so much. And this is obviously we're all very excited about this. I think the possibilities are wonderfully purposeful. And I would ask you to use your megaphone to spread the word because we really want institutions around the country to kind of figure out how can I make this work. We talked with the president of Estes Rocket on one of our Zoom calls recently. They're going to do some sort of a Goddard replica rocket so that schools all around the country could launch something maybe on the same day. So there's a lot of momentum going, but we want to make sure we scream out to anyone of like-minded personalities that love space as we do and find ways where they can leverage it, especially to inspire young people. That's the goal. [Music] That's it for T-Minus Deep Space brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us at space@n2k.com or submit the survey in the show notes. Your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpie is our publisher and I'm your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. See you next time. 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