Liquid-Fuel Rockets

Robert Goddard fired the first modern rocket using liquid fuels on March 16, 1926, near Auburn, Massachusetts. The flight last- ed a mere 2.5 seconds, and the rocket rose only 41 feet (14 m) above a farmer’s field, but we could say that the rocket was aimed straight at the stars. Goddard later moved to the wide- open spaces of New Mexico and continued to improve his designs.
Meanwhile, a group of engineers in Germany formed a rocket club and began to work on designs similar to Goddard’s. When the German government was looking for ideas for secret weapons to use against the Allies in World War II, the army hired some of the men in the rocket club. The result was a missile called the V-2. The “V” stood for “vengeance weapon.” The engineers worked very hard to make a successful design, and thousands of V-2s were packed with explosives and launched toward Great Britain and other war zones. Sadly, many citizens were killed by V-2 explosions in the summer of 1944.