was an American physicist and inventor who in 1926 constructed and tested successfully the first rocket using liquid fuel. Along with Tsiolkovsky and Oberth, Goddard is looked upon as one of the main founders of modern rocketry and having launched an entirely new field of science and engineering. The flight lasted just 2.5 seconds, reaching an altitude of 12.3 meters and landing (crashing, actually) 55.2 meters from the launch site in his Aunt Effie's cabbage patch. Funded by aviator Charles Lindberg and philanthropist Daniel Guggenheim, Goddard built an entire research laboratory on Eden Valley near Roswell, New Mexico. Over the coming decades, Goddard developed a wide range of technologies that produced 214 patents in rocketry. He also made an early breakthrough in magnetic levitation (1904). He proposed a frictionless form of travel by raising train cars off the rails by electromagnetic repulsion roadbeds. The trains would travel at fantastic speeds inside a steel vacuum tube.