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Rocket Mail of the WorldFame. Although not widely known in the west, the Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics in Kaluga, Russia, keeps the importance of his work before the public. Robert H. Goddard Born in 1882, Goddard had an early interest in lighter-than-air balloons, and at the beginning of the 20th century he conducted the first practical rocketry experiments in the United States. By 1915 he was launching his rockets with various solid fuels, and measuring their exhaust velocities. Although no one had ever built a successful liquid-propellant rocket before, Goddard soon began to see the possibilities. In particular, he understood that a liquidpropellant rocket could be controlled more easily, and could be shut down after ignition, but a solid-propellant rocket couldn%u2019t. The technical challenges were more daunting than using a solid propellant, requiring both fuel and oxygen tanks, turbines, and combustion chambers. Despite the difficulties, Goddard flew a successful liquid-propellant rocket (named Nell) on March 16, 1926. It was fueled by liquid oxygen and gasoline, flew for only two-and-a-half seconds, climbed a mere 12.5 meters, and landed only 56 meters away in a cabbage patch. It was not an impressive demonstration, but it was the forerunner of a whole new era in rocket flight. In the following years, Goddard%u2019s rockets grew larger and flew higher. He developed a gyroscope system for flight control, a payload compartment for scientific instruments, as well as a parachute recovery system to return rockets and instruments safely to the ground. Between 1926 and 1941, he launched a total of 35 rockets, one of which achieved an altitude of over 8,000 feet.Goddard, who died in 1945 at the age of 62, was credited with 214 patents. In 1959, he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, and NASA%u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center was established in his honor. The next year he received the prestigious Langley Gold Medal from the Smithsonian Institution.Hermann OberthHermann Oberth was born on June 25, 1894 in Transylvania, and died at the age of 96 in Germany. A book he published in 1923 about rocket travel into outer space led to him being an adviser for Fritz Lang%u2019s 1929 science-fiction film Frau im Mond(The Woman in the Moon). His book inspired many small rocket societies to spring up around the world. In 1930, in Germany, Oberth was one of the founders the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel), which conducted some early liquid-fuel rocket experiments, and received funding from the German army. The sponsorship was possible because rocket development was not restricted by the Treaty of Versailles. As the group launched increasingly more powerful rockets of their own design, the German military asked for a demonstration launch. But the Society%u2019s members rejected the proposal, and internal dissension led to the group dissolving in January of 1934. 1964 U.S. postage stamp honoring Robert H. Goddard.