The Goddard Rocket Film Reels

Reel 03: Rocket Development, July 1930 - March 1931

Type

Video

Loading...

Media is loading
 

Date

1930-1931

Description

The Goddard Rocket Film Reels consists of twelve four-hundred-foot 16mm black-and-white film reels documenting Robert Goddard's experimental work with rockets in Auburn, Massachusetts, Roswell, New Mexico, and Annapolis, Maryland from 1926 through 1945. These reels were restruck in the mid-1960s, which were then digitized several years ago. Some, and very likely all, of these home movies were shot by Robert's wife Esther C. Goddard.

Reel 3 contains a series of preparation building and rocket development tests from July 1930 to March 1931. Robert and Esther Goddard arrived in Roswell, New Mexico in July 1930 for tests that would begin in October of the same year. The project was moved to Roswell under funding from Daniel Guggenheim. For the static tests seen in this footage, the combustion chamber decided upon for use in flight tests was 5 3/4 inches in diameter and weighed 5 pounds. In these static tests the maximum lift was 289 pounds, with duration of 20-plus seconds, lifting force steady, and jet velocities over 5000 feet per second.

This list of intertitles gives a detailed account of the footage contained in this reel:

(00:02) The erection of the shop
(00:35) The erection of the static tower, near the shop
(01:17) The erection of the tower for the flights, ten miles away
(01:50) The static tower, showing some of the final tests of pressure regulation
(02:52) Notice the double flame in the next tests
(03:53) The last, and best, static test for pressure regulation
(04:34) The lift-time recorder used in the static tests
(05:01) Lift-time curve of the last static test. The curve has been inked, for clearness, and marked off in second intervals

Duration

00:05:27

Genre

home movies

Keywords

Robert H. Goddard, rocketry, home movies, motion picture film, static tests, Roswell

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS