The New York Times trashes Robert H. Goddard in 1920 and then (sort of) regrets in ... 1969.
On 17 July 1969, when the Apollo crew was on the way to the first landing of man on the Moon, The New York Times finally printed a correction:
A Correction. On Jan. 13, 1920, “Topics of the Times,” and editorial-page feature of the The New York Times, dismissed the notion that a rocket could function in vacuum and commented on the ideas of Robert H. Goddard, the rocket pioneer, as follows:
“That Professor Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing 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.”
Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.
Via Crossing Wall Street, from AstronauticsNow.com.
