The NYT Said Rockets Could Never Work
On January 13, 1920, the New York Times published an editorial insisting that a rocket couldn't possibly work in space.
The quote:
That professor Goddard, with his “chair” in Clark College and the [financing] of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react—to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
Goddard pushed back against a wave of criticism, unsuccessfully. He retreated from the public eye and from most interactions with other scientists but continued his research. Eventually, he'd be vindicated when a rocket launched in 1944 and the Apollo mission was completed in 1969.
It took until July 17, 1969, almost fifty years later, for the New York Times to take back its harsh words. The correction is almost comically dry and conspicuously doesn't mention the Apollo missions. “The Times regrets their error.”
How much did this set back humanity? The Apollo missions might have happened decades earlier! Did you notice how they went after his grant funding? They said, “Why is the Smithsonian funding this guy?”
The journalist versus tech thing has been going on for so long. Matt Ridley writes about this in his book How Innovation Works. Ida Tarbell and a lot of other muckrakers went after Rockefeller and the other captains of industry who built America. They were all attacked by these journos in the early 1900s. Now we're fighting that same battle in reverse. I think this time the tech founders are going to win.
