The History of Outer Space: Exploring Rocket Science

Up, Up, and Away

“Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one can not remain the cradle forever” Konstantin Tsiolkovsky said this in 1895. This episode I want to talk about the three founding fathers of modern rocketry. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is the oldest, a Polish immigrant in Russia. Hermann Oberth is originally from Romania but from German speaking parents born in 1894 in Transylvania, what is now Romania but at the time part of the great Austro-Hungarian empire. Robert Hutchings Goddard was born in 1882 in Worcester Massachusetts. All three were heavily inspired by Science-Fiction writers like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky started by calculating that using a giant cannon to fire a spacecraft to the moon, utilized in his novel "From the Earth to the Moon," would generate acceleration forces that would kill its passengers..” – Rediscovery Channel

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