That's Dr. Robert Goddard, and the image came from NASA's GRIN (Great Images In Nasa) site, an amazing resource for historical photos about aerospace and space.
Each image is available for downloading in several sizes and resolutions, and also have additional information about the photos.
From the site description of this photo:
Dr. Robert H. Goddard at a blackboard at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1924. Goddard began teaching physics in 1914 at Clark and in 1923 was named the Director of the Physical Laboratory. In 1920 the Smithsonian Institution published his seminal paper A Method for Reaching Extreme Altitudes where he asserted that rockets could be used to send payloads to the Moon. Declaring the absurdity of rockets ever reaching the Moon, the press mocked Goddard and his paper, calling him "Moon Man." To avoid further scrutiny Goddard eventually moved to New Mexico where he could conduct his research in private. Dr. Goddard, died in 1945, but was probably as responsible for the dawning of the Space Age as the Wrights were for the beginning of the Air Age. Yet his work attracted little serious attention during his lifetime. However, when the United States began to prepare for the conquest of space in the 1950's, American rocket scientists began to recognize the debt owed to the New England professor. They discovered that it was virtually impossible to construct a rocket or launch a satellite without acknowledging the work of Dr. Goddard.
Check it out, tons of history and pictures.
| Date | Home | Visitors |
|---|---|---|
| Sun, Oct 24 | Dr Funk | Tuning Spork |
| Victor | Catt | |
| Fri, Oct 29 | Catt | Victor |
| Gir | GEBIV | |
| Brian J and Frinklin | Jenn | |
| Sat, Oct 30 | Gir | Dr. Funk |
| GEBIV | Derek | |
| Jenn | Brian J and Frinklin | |
| Tuning Spork | Catt | |
| Kin | Heather | |
| Sun, Oct 31 | Gir | Cindy |
| Dr. Funk | Catt |
Boy howdy.
Now this one was called the Invader Zim Song of Doom, and if you don't know what that's referring to, then you don't watch enough cartoons. It eventually crashed.
This one was called the Higher Calling (note the past tense). A two-stage rocket, she folded nearly in half just above the fins on her first full-up flight. Estimated speed was 300mph. I repaired her and she made many more single-stage flights before being lost in a farmer's field.
This is my youngest daughter, Rachael, five years ago, holding the rocket she won as a prize for the Rocket Design Contest. We built it from a kit, and she still flies it.
That's me a few years ago, holding a semi-scale model of the Phoenix air-to-air missile. I still fly this one too.
Although we fly some rather large rockets, ours our actually on the smallish side when in comes to high power rocketry. This, for example, is a scale model of a Nike-Hercules, with four motors in the first stage, and a single motor in the second stage. More power in one flight than we do all day long.
Now here is where my wife would make a joke about overcompensating. Me? I'm just jealous.
This kind of launch is what keeps me loving the hobby.
If you don't recognize the term, PDA stands for Personal Digital Assistant, and refers to that group of handheld devices like the Palm Pilot, the iPAQ Pocket PC, Blackberry and many others. Basically, they're PC's that fit into your pocket. I recently got one, and love it to death.
Why in the world would you want to do a PDA-friendly version of your blog? Well, some of us out in the world are techno-junkies (not me) and some of us just don't have time to surf to all the places we'd like to each and every day (uh, that would be me). So by downloading your blog to our PDA's every day or two, we can benefit from your wisdom and insight whenever we have a moment or two to spare.
First I'll explain the steps to make your blog PDA friendly, then in part two I'll show those who have PDA's how to get this great blog content downloaded to your wee beastie. It's all in the extended entry.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1" />
<TITLE>Rocket Jones - PDA Version</TITLE>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body {
color:#333;
background-color:white;
margin:20px;
padding:0px;
font:11px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
leftMargin=0
}
h1 {
font:bold 12px/12px verdana, arial, helvetica,
sans-serif;
margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding:0px;
}
p {
font:11px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
color:#333333;
margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding:0px;
}
.Content>p {margin:0px;}
.Content>p+p {text-indent:0px;}
.tinyfont { font:8px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
.smallfont { font:9px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
.titlefont { font:14px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
a {
color:#000000;
font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
text-decoration:none;
}
A:link { color: #09c; TEXT-DECORATION: none }
A:visited { color: #07a; TEXT-DECORATION: none }
A:active { TEXT-DECORATION: none }
A:hover {
FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-STYLE: normal
BACKGROUND: #eee;
}
#Header {
margin:50px 0px 10px 0px;
padding:17px 0px 0px 20px;
/* For IE5/Win's benefit height = [correct height] +
[top padding] + [top and bottom border widths] */
height:33px; /* 14px + 17px + 2px = 33px */
border-style:solid;
border-color:black;
border-width:1px 0px; /* top and bottom borders: 1px;
left and right borders: 0px */
line-height:11px;
background-color:#eee;
/* Here is the ugly brilliant hack that protects IE5/Win
from its own stupidity. Thanks to Tantek Celik for the
hack and to Eric Costello for publicizing it. IE5/Win
incorrectly parses the "\"}"" value, prematurely
closing the style declaration. The incorrect IE5/Win
value is above, while the correct value is below. See
http://glish.com/css/hacks.asp for details. */
voice-family: "\"}\"";
voice-family:inherit;
height:14px; /* the correct height */
}
/* I've heard this called the "be nice to Opera 5" rule.
Basically, it feeds correct length values to user agents
that exhibit the parsing error exploited above yet get
the CSS box model right and understand the CSS2
parent-child selector. ALWAYS include a "be nice to
Opera 5" rule every time you use the Tantek Celik
hack (above). */
body>#Header {height:14px;}
.Content {
margin:5px 5px 5px 5px;
padding:2px;
}
.dateheader {
position:relative;
width:auto;
min-width:120px;
margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding:5px;
z-index:3;
}
-->
</style>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV id=Header>Rocket Jones - PDA Version</DIV>
<div align="left">
<MTEntries lastn="15">
<MTDateHeader>
<div class="dateheader"><H1><$MTEntryDate format="%A, %B %e,
%Y"$></H1></DIV>
</MTDateHeader>
<br>
<DIV class="content">
<span class="titlefont"><i><$MTEntryTitle$></i>
(<$MTEntryDate format="%I:%M%p"$>)<br /></span>
<$MTEntryBody$>
<MTEntryIfExtended>
<p><$MTEntryMore$></p>
</MTEntryIfExtended>
<MTEntryIfAllowComments>
<p>
<p>:: Comments left behind ::</p>
<MTComments>
<$MTCommentBody$>
<span class="smallfont">:: <$MTCommentAuthorLink$>
<$MTCommentDate$></span><br /><br />
</MTComments>
</MTEntryIfAllowComments>
</div>
</MTEntries>
</div>
<HR width="75%">
<P CLASS="tinyfont" align="center">
<a href="http://www.movabletype.org">Powered by MovableType</a></P>
</body>
</html>
(end copy here)
5. Save the template.
6. Rebuild the template.
7. Go to your web site and view the results.
8. Tweak until satisifed.
9. Post a link to it on your main web site. I put mine in the sidebar.
10. Announce it. Put the word out. Let the world know that it's there so we can take advantage of it. There will be much rejoicing amongst us geekish types, because, you know, according to the Dilbert author, we're getting all the chicks and we don't have all day to be sitting at the keyboard anymore.
11. That's what he says anyways.
Ok, so that part is pretty straightforward. For those who don't want or like to tweak, the default as given above seems to be fairly standard and works well.
The next part will be for the PDA-enabled. You know it's out there, how do you get at it via your PDA?