To: Srexley who wrote (210107 ) 12/14/2001 12:59:18 PM From: TigerPaw Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 769670 I do not, so your point is meaningless Your assumptions are in your statements, not in your denials. I would guess that 30 years before we went to the moon that it was determenied that could not be done either. 1939? Goddard was actually working on a Mars landing before 1939 but told the government that the funds were actually for a moon landing. They believed him. So did the Germans. Towards the end of his 1920 report, Goddard outlined the possibility of a rocket reaching the moon and exploding a load of flash powder there to mark its arrival. The bulk of his scientific report to the Smithsonian was a dry explanation of how he used the $5000 grant in his research. Yet, the press picked up Goddard' s scientific proposal about a rocket flight to the moon and erected a journalistic controversy concerning the feasibility of such a thing. Much ridicule came Goddard's way. And he reached firm convictions about the virtues of the press corps which he held for the rest of his life. Yet, several score of the 1750 copies of the 1920 Smithsonian report reached Europe. The German Rocket Society was formed in 1927, and the German Army began its rocket program in 1931. Goddard's greatest engineering contributions were made during his work in the 1920's and 1930's (see list of historic firsts). He received a total of $10,000 from the Smithsonian by 1927, and through the personal efforts of Charles A. Lindbergh, he subsequently received financial support from the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation. Progress on all of his work was published in "Liquid Propellant Rocket Development," which was published by the Smithsonian in 1936.gsfc.nasa.gov