30 Probably the greatest NACA contribution to the century series (F-100, etc.) was a discovery made in 1951 by Richard T. Whitcomb, an aeronautical engineer working mainly in the recently opened 8-foot, slotted-throat tunnel at the Langley laboratory. Whitcomb collected data on the lengthwise distribution of fuselage and wing volume and suggested an airplane configuration that minimized drag at supersonic speeds. Whitcomb’s findings, known as the “area rule,” indicated that a coke-bottle, or wasp-waisted, shape would significantly increase the speed of jet-propelled airplanes. The importance of the area rule was reflected in the configuration of practically every jet interceptor designed and built for both the Air Force and the Navy in the mid-1950s. See Richard T. Whitcomb, “A Study of the Zero-Lift Drag-Rise Characteristics of Wing-Body Combinations Near the Speed of Sound,” NACA Tech. Report 1273, Forty-Second Annual Report of the NACA–1956 (Washington, 1957), 519-539.
31 Discussions of the principles of rocketry can be found in many places, but some of the most lucid explanations from the layman’s standpoint are in Ley, Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel, 60-65; Erik Bergaust and Seabrook Hull, Rocket to the Moon (Princeton, N.J., 1958), 33-43; Ralph S. Cooper, “Rocket Propulsion,” Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1962, 299-313; and Andrew G. Haley, Rocketry and Space Exploration (Princeton, N.J., 1958), 33-43. See also NASA news release, unnumbered, “Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines,” Jan. 1962. Equally informative as an introduction to rocketry but historically important as a spur to enthusiasts was G. Edward Pendray’s The Coming Age of Rocket Power (New York, 1945), wherein rocket efficiency was pictured as opening “the way to an entire new world of velocities, altitudes, and powers which have hitherto been closed to us; and consequently to a whole new world of human experiences and possibilities” (p. 9).
32 See A. A. Blagonravov, ed., Collected Works of K. E. Tsiolkovsky, Vol. II: Reactive Flying Machines, NASA TT F-237 (Washington, 1965).
33 For biographical information on Tsiolkovsky, see A. Kosmodemyansky, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, His Life and Work, trans. X. Danko (Moscow, 1956); Albert Parry, Russia’s Rockets and Missiles (Garden City, N.Y., 1960), 94-104; Beryl Williams and Samuel Epstein, The Rocket Pioneers on the Road to Space (New York, 1955), 52-69; Heinz Gartmann, The Men Behind the Space Rockets (New York, 1956), 26-35; and K. E. Tsiolkovsky, “An Autobiography,” trans. A. N. Petroff, Astronautics, IV (May 1959), 48-49, 63-64; V. N. Sokolskiy, “The Works of the Russian Scientist-Pioneers of Rocket Technology,” in T. M. Melkumov, ed., Pioneers of Rocket Technology (Moscow, 1964), NASA TT F-9285 (Washington, 1965), 125-162.
34 Biographical material on Goddard, little known outside of scientific circles until recent years, is accumulating rapidly. A valuable but not definitive biography is Milton Lehman, This High Man: The Life of Robert H. Goddard (New York, 1963). See also E. R. Hagemann, “Goddard and His Early Rockets: 1882-1930,” Journal of the Astronautical Sciences, VII (Summer 1961), 51-59; Eugene M. Emme, “Yesterday’s Dream—Today’s Reality,” Air Power Historian, VII (Oct., 1960), 2 1 6—22 1; G. Edward Pendray, “Pioneer Rocket Development in the United States,” in Emme, The History of Rocket Technology, 19-23; also published in Technology and Culture, IV (Fall 1963), 384-388; Williams and Epstein, Rocket Pioneers, 70-110; Shirley Thomas, Men of Space (6 vols., Philadelphia, 1960-1963), I, 23-46; Gartmann, Men Behind the Space Rockets; and Emme, A History of Space Flight (New York, 1965), 85-87.
35 Goddard’s 1920 Smithsonian Institution report and a less famous report to the Smithsonian summarizing his findings to 1936 are in Robert H. Goddard, Rockets, Comprising “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes" and "Liquid-Propellant Rocket Development" (New York, 1946). A condensation of Goddard’s notebooks is Esther C. Goddard and G. Edward Pendray, eds., Rocket Development: Liquid-Fuel Rocket Research, 1929–1941 (New York, 1961). The eastern daily newspapers seized on Goddard’s “moon-rocket” reference in his first Smithsonian paper and blew it completely out of proportion. Some journals, having no conception of the mechanics of rocketry, even ridiculed the idea that a rocket could ascend into space, because in a vacuum it would have nothing to “react against.” See, for example, the lead editorial in New York Times, Jan. 13, 1920. The storm of embarrassing publicity doubtless abetted the aversion to notoriety that characterized Goddard throughout his career.
36 Pendray, “Pioneer Rocket Development in the United States,” 21-23; Pendray, The Coming of Age of Rocket Power, 35-43; Ley, Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel, 443.
