Zen Pencils by Gavin Aung Than for October 21, 2024

He was a bit ahead of his time.

Da*n straight.And only one country has done it.

Dreams are important, they expand our horizons and show us what is possible:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.” – Dr Martin Luther King, 1963

There are some among us who would turn back time, but I am hopeful we will not choose that path. We are not there yet, Sir, but we are working on it.

Gavin – you are brilliant. You provide a warm spark in our world. Thank you.

Goddard could be considered the father of modern rocketry but it was Wernher von Braun who perfected it and made the American space program a reality.

It was in the days of attempted perfection in workmanship and calculations and before the days of the current computer fiddle factor.

Not ahead of his time. The time was ripe, he was a pioneer who put his dreams into practice and whose experiments pushed us forward and gave us hope to achieve the goals. It is sad he did not live to see the fruits of his dreams.

It was just over a week ago that we had o e return to its launch pad.

Years ago, back in the 90’s, I was stationed on Fort Devens, Mass. Not far from our quarters on post was a small memorial to Goddard, it looks much like the model rocket in panel 5. It was off on a running trial, in a deserted area on post. I found this on the Fort Deven’s museum FB page:

In 1929 Robert Goddard (“The Father of Modern Rocketry”) received permission from the War Department to conduct rocket field tests at Camp Devens with conditions to preventing a similar fire that occurred in Auburn and had banished him from the state of Massachusetts. Here, “in a lonely dismal section of nearly deserted Camp Devens,” he converted an abandoned chicken coop to use as an office and built an 80 foot steel tower for his tests.

Many years later, a replica tower and monument were erected at the site and the words in Latin at the bottom of the plaque translated to “Thus Do We Go To The Stars.” The monument was removed in 1994 in anticipation of the closing of Fort Devens.

My fav memory is having witnessed a Saturn 5 launch in person from the NASA VIP box about a mile from it. The roar of those 5 engines at full song is indescribable. The rocket just sits then slowly rises. When those engines cleared the base…..wow!!! The NASA engineers shouting Go Baby Go! Something that big going up and all the time accelerating. All from a guy with a little metal rocket in a field.

Then, as today, laymen expect perfection from scientists from Day 1… fortunately, scientists love their work enough to ignore those laymen.