Travel by Dynamite [links]

[Monte Davis]

Obviously the Times reporter is having fun. Without another account, one
can't tell how lunatic (or marginally sane) the original proposal might have
been, e.g. whether this Pynchon was talking about off-the-shelf dynamite or
some slower-burning variant.

In general, liquid-fueled rockets would come to be preferred because they
can be throttled by valve and because the best liquid propellants have a
higher exhaust velocity -- the core determinant of rocket performance --
than any solid. (OTOH, solid propellants offer an edge in storage and
instant readiness; they are used in the Minuteman and Poseidon ICBMs, as
well as nearly all smaller battlefield and air-launched rockets.)

It's worth noting that Robert Goddard, enshrined in history for launching
the first liquid-fueled rocket in 1926, had spent some years trying to come
up with a boom-boom-boom system: small "cartridges" of solid fuel fed
rapidly into a combustion chamber and detonated one after another, throttled
by speeding or slowing the feed mechanism. He gave up not because the idea
was utterly worthless, but because (as automatic-weapon designers know) a
rapid jam-proof mechanism is a very tough challenge.

It may or may not be relevant that a tentative Goddard idea of 1919 for a
small rocket probe to the moon was mocked in a NY Times editorial -- which
notoriously accused him among other things of not knowing that a rocket
"needs something better than a vacuum against which to react." (It doesn't).

After the V2 in 1944 and even more after Sputnik in 1957, Americans
anxiously felt "why weren't we first?" and needed a native "father of
rocketry" to match Germany's Oberth and Von Braun, and Russia's Tsiolkovsky.
The NY Times incident became central to a perversely comforting "they
laughed at Columbus" mythology: if only we'd taken Goddard seriously, the
Germans and Reds must have stolen his ideas, etc.

In fact, Goddard had received extensive support from the Smithsonian,
Guggenheim Foundation, Charles Lindbergh, et al, and much more favorable
than unfavorable publicity over all. His real problem was that he was (1) a
better scientist than engineer, and (2) a prima donna who micro-managed
every detail of his rockets' design and construction -- when rapid progress
would require the industrial scale and teamwork of a Peenemunde.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Goddard_(scientist)