A、An airplane designer. B、A science fiction writer. C、The inventor of rockets. D、A famous theoretical physicist. C

Robert Goddard, American physicist and rocket scientist, once said that the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow. It was his scientific work that gave hope to many of our dreams about space and then turned them into reality.
    Robert Goddard’s many studies and tests in the early 1900s led to the first rocket. Then he developed rockets with more than one engine. Each engine pushed the rocket higher and higher out of Earth’s atmosphere. His ideas are still used today.So, in a way, every rocket that flies today is a Goddard rocket.
    Robert Goddard was far ahead of his time. He developed and flew many rockets that got their power from solid fuels. Then, in 1925, he made and tested the first rocket engine using a soft chemical fuel. In 1926, he successfully fired the world’s first liquid-fuel rocket.
    Robert Goddard died in 1945 of cancer. He was sixty-three years old. He received a special honor many years after his death. In 1959, the United States established the Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington, D.C. The Goddard Space Flight Center honors the man whose work proved that machines could travel out of Earth’s atmosphere, into space.