FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

154 SMITHSONIAN ANNALS OF FLIGHT
FIGURE 20.—Wyld motor in action. From Astronautics, no. 50
(October 1941), p. 8.
possible: subsequent development would necessarily
depend on massive support, large-scale engineering
teamwork, and government interest. In the end,
so it proved.
Meanwhile the American Rocket Society continued
to develop rapidly as a technical society,
especially after about 1944. By 1 February 1963,
when it merged with the Institute of the Aerospace
Sciences to form the American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics, the American Rocket
Society had more than 20,000 members. 32 The
combined organization, of course, is now almost
twice that size, and is, I believe, the largest technical
society in the world devoted to the more rapid
development of the related sciences of aeronautics
and astronautics.
NOTES
Under the title Ranniy period deyatel'nosti Amerikanskogo
raketnogo ovshchestva, this paper appeared on pages 97-108
of Iz istorii astronavtiki i raketnoi tekhniki: Materialy XVHI
mezhdunarodnogo astronavticheskogo kongressa, Belgrad, 25-
29 Sentyavrya 1967 [From the History of Rockets and Astronautics:
Materials of the 18th International Astronautical
Congress, Belgrade, 25-29 September 1967], Moscow: Nauka,
1970.
G. Edward Pendray has been closely associated with the
development of rockets since 1929, being one of the founders
and a director and advisor of the American Rocket Society
(which merged in January 1963 with the Institute of the
Aerospace Sciences to form the American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics). He wrote the influential book,
The Coming Age of Rocket Power (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1945), in which many of the details here presented
are to be found on pages 118-130. With Mrs. Esther C.
Goddard, he edited a collection of Dr. Goddard's research
notes published as Rocket Development: Liquid-Fuel Rocket
Research, 1929-1941 (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1948;
rev. ed., paperback, 1961) and also with Mrs. Goddard, he
recently completed editing The Papers of Robert H. Goddard
(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1970).
1. "The Forthcoming Annual Meeting," Astronautics (official
publication of the American Interplanetary Society), no.
28 (March 1934); reprinted edition (New York: Kraus Reprint
Corporation, 1958), p. 7. The name of the American Interplanetary
Society was changed to the American Rocket Society
at the annual meeting on the evening of 6 April 1934.
2. G. Edward Pendray, "The First Quarter Century of the
American Rocket Society," Jet Propulsion (Journal of the
American Rocket Society), vol. 25, no. 11 (November 1955),
p. 586.
3. Robert H. Goddard, "A Method of Reaching Extreme
Altitudes" (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 71, no.
2, 69 figs., 11 pis., December 1919) and "Liquid Propellant
Rocket Development" (ibid., vol. 95, no. 3, 10 pp., 11 pis.,
16 March 1936) were republished by the American Rocket
Society in one volume entitled Rockets in 1945, with a new
foreword by Dr. Goddard and Pendray. Goddard began
correspondence with Pendray early in the history of the
American Interplanetary Society. Both men wrote each other
and occasionally met throughout Goddard's life. One result
of this association was the American Rocket Society combined
edition of Goddard's classic reports. (See Esther C. Goddard
and G. Edward Pendray, editors, Tl :• Papers of Robert H.
Goddard (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1970),
vol. 2, pp. 795-96, 1073, 1074 and 1084; and vol. 3, pp. 1346,
1540-45, 1548-56, 1581, and 1598—Ed.)
4. "Has Two-Step Rocket Ready," Bulletin, American
Interplanetary Society, no. 6 (January 1931); reprinted edition
(New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1958), p. 1; "American
Rocket Pioneers, No. 3, Dr. Darwin O. Lyon," Journal
of the American Rocket Society, no. 61 (March 1945), p. 11.
5. Willy Ley, in a footnote on page 129 of his Rockets,
Missiles, and Men in Space (New York: Viking Press, 1968),
comments on a misunderstanding regarding the evolution of
the German VfR Miraks which apparently resulted from
these conversations.
6. Pendray, "The German Rockets," Bulletin, American
Interplanetary Society, no. 9 (May 1931), pp. 5-12.
7. Pendray, "The Conquest of Space by Rocket," Bulletin,
American Interplanetary Society, no. 17 (March 1932), pp.
3-7. Discusses the evolution of ARS Rocket No. 1.
8. Pendray, "History of the First A.I.S. Rocket," Astronautics,
no. 24 (November-December 1932), pp. 1-5; and
Pendray, "Why Not Shoot Rockets?" Journal of the British
Interplanetary Society, vol. 2, no. 2, 1935, pp. 9-12. This
account discusses the cost of ARS Rocket No. 1.
9. Pendray, "The Flight of Experimental Rocket No. 2,"
Astronautics, no. 26 (May 1933), pp. 1-13.
10. Goddard, "Liquid-Propellant Rocket Development" (see
Note 3), pp. 2-3.
11. "Three New Rockets Being Built," Astronautics, no. 27
(October 1933), pp. 1-8; and "Society's Rockets Near Completion,"
Astronautics, no. 28 (March 1934), pp. 2-6.
12. "Rocket Experiments of 1934," Astronautics, no. 29
(September 1934), pp. 1-3.