Could you imagine yourself being the reason why space travel is as great as it is today? Robert Goddard is the wonderful man behind it all. Many people were so surprised when he announced that the first rocket powered by liquid oxygen and gasoline was built and ready for launch! On March 16, 1926 in Auburn, Massachusetts, on Goddard's aunts' farm, many witnessed the launch of the first working rocket into space. The rocket traveled for two point five seconds going about sixty miles an hour and hovering forty-one feet in the air, then landed one hundred and eighty-four feet away. The first powered rocket influenced today's wonderful space travel, and is why NASA started it! Goddard's great achievement in 1926 is the reason for today's successes! Robert left thousands of people, especially the government, in awe. They therefore did not want to finance the procurement of rocket materials; he had to pay for it out of pocket with the help of Clark University. The way the news of this rocket spread is because the Smithsonian Institution published the paper titled “A Method of Reaching High Altitudes.” Thousands of people around the world read the article and were there to see the success of the first powered rocket. The first powered rocket not only had an effect on space travel and people's joy; it affected the V-2 rocket and the gyroscope. The V-2 rocket is a missile invented by Wernher von Braun, a German scientist. He was born in 1912 and has always been the guy to beat in his scientific endeavors and strategies since he was a teenager. Braun joined the Society for Space Travel which led him to leaps and bounds above everyone else in the knowledge of liquid fuel rockets and to... middle of paper... the state of the world and the compulsion to do something about that." So Branson thought, “Why not me? Why can't I be the first person to send people into space?” So he devised a plan where ordinary people for twenty-two million dollars could finally explore what it's like to see Earth from space without years of college to be an astronaut. The rocket that is sending people into space is called the AX and it is specialized to allow humans to have a nice long relaxing trip into space and they hope to build many more rockets like this and hopefully one day bring the price down to way not to do it You don't have to be a millionaire. There were twenty-two lucky people, some famous and some not so famous, who were sent on the first flight of this rocket into space. Without the first fueled rocket, those lucky people and hopefully more people to come would not have even seen space! (Stapler)