structural:summarization, information:classification, linguistic:voice_change
First scientific writings

The high school student summed up his ideas on space travel in a proposed article, "The Navigation of Space," which he submitted to the Popular Science News. The journal's editor returned it, saying that they could not use it "in the near future."

While still an undergraduate, Goddard wrote a paper proposing a method for balancing airplanes using gyro-stabilization. He submitted the idea to Scientific American, which published the paper in 1907. Goddard later wrote in his diaries that he believed his paper was the first proposal of a way to automatically stabilize aircraft in flight. His proposal came around the same time as other scientists were making breakthroughs in developing functional gyroscopes.

While studying physics at WPI, ideas came to Goddard's mind that sometimes seemed impossible, but he was compelled to record them for future investigation. He wrote that "there was something inside which simply would not stop working." He purchased some cloth-covered notebooks and began filling them with a variety of thoughts, mostly concerning his dream of space travel. He considered centrifugal force, radio waves, magnetic reaction, solar energy, atomic energy, ion or electrostatic propulsion and other methods to reach space. After experimenting with solid fuel rockets he was convinced by 1909 that chemical-propellant engines were the answer. A particularly complex concept was set down in June 1908: Sending a camera around distant planets, guided by measurements of gravity along the trajectory, and returning to earth.

His first writing on the possibility of a liquid-fueled rocket came on February 2, 1909. Goddard had begun to study ways of increasing a rocket's efficiency using methods differing from conventional solid-fuel rockets. He wrote in his notebook about using liquid hydrogen as a fuel with liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. He believed that 50 percent efficiency could be achieved with these liquid propellants (i.e., half of the heat energy of combustion converted to the kinetic energy of the exhaust gases).