# vacuum confusion **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 12, 2007, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-confusion/407661 "2007-06-12T03:42:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jurph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/50afbb/32.png) [@Jurph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jurph)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-confusion/407661/21 "2007-06-13T13:04:18Z")
You’re not the first to ask this. In 1920, an editor at the New York Times asked the same question about Robert Goddard. As the Apollo mission made its way toward the moon, the editors at the Times finally had the decency to print the following retraction… From the New York Times, July 17 1969: > [@](#): > > ``` > A Correction. On Jan. 13, 1920, "Topics of the Times," and editorial-page feature of the The New York Times, dismissed the notion that a rocket could function in vacuum and commented on the ideas of Robert H. Goddard, the rocket pioneer, as follows: > > ``` > > > [@](#): > > > > ``` > > "That Professor Goddard, with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react - to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." > > > > ``` > > ``` > Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error. > > ``` (from [Robert H. Goddard. The New York Times.](http://astronauticsnow.com/history/goddard/index.html)) ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-confusion/407661/22 "2007-06-13T13:51:28Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by_ **CJOK** : > Thank`s for that lads. My brain can just about deal with that. But , her`s a similar problem I have; if earth is moving through space at 36,000 mph[so i`ve read!], and your average rocket does about 17,000mph, why doesn`t the rocket get left behind, like a pigeon being thrown out of a car window! Not that i`d suggest anyone would do that with a pigeon! p.s. Do you have pigeons over there? p.p.s I`m in good old England, you see! > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by_ **CJOK** : > That`s freaky that mate, but `ll accept it. What on earth is this? I’m in “good old England” as well and I have never heard anyone speak like this - never mind type like this - outside of an American sitcom that is 😃 I’m not sure we are fighting ignorance here - more being wound up! ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-confusion/407661/23 "2007-06-13T13:56:32Z")
[QUOTE=MarcusF] What on earth is this? I’m in “good old England” as well and I have never heard anyone speak like this [/QUOTE] I don’t think it was meant to be inflammatory - it sounds like a sort of jokey faux-WWII-fighter-pilot affectation to me, but then I’m posting from [Dear Old Blighty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blighty) myself. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-confusion/407661/24 "2007-06-13T14:15:36Z")
> [@](#): > > Apart from the whole explosive decompression thing. A mushy, sublimating blob that used to be a pigeon (the best sort of pigeon in my opinion) will continue to sail along beside you As I’ve remarked before, this has been oversold by movies (since it makes an interesting and gruesome shot) and books. as Arthur C. Clarke has pointed out many times, bodies don’t explode when suddenly thrust into vacuum. He wrote a piece about it (it’s reprinted in his collection “The View from Serendip”) and he used the idea of astronauts leaving a space ship without suits in three stories at least, and referred to it in a fourth. It even shows up in the film **2001** , when Dave Bowman gets back aboard the Discovery after HAL locks him out, even though he has no helmet. Clarke wrote the piece reprinted in TVfS to justify that scene. He had NASA experimental data to back him up. But exploding things look interesting, so we have people blowing up in the movies **Outland** , **License to Kill** , and **Total recall** , and the books “Garden on the Moon” by Pierre Boule and “Four Came Back” by Martin Caidin. And probably lots of others I haven’t read or seen. But, as Clarke put it, “we’re built tougher than that” Pigeons too, I’ll bet. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-confusion/407661/25 "2007-06-13T14:35:38Z")
Pigeons might be in slightly more trouble than humans from rapid decompression, as the former have comparatively more air-filled spaces in their bodies. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-confusion/407661/26 "2007-06-13T14:44:02Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] He had NASA experimental data to back him up. [/QUOTE] Hats off to the volunteers in _that_ experiment. ---
**Author:** ![CJOK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@CJOK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJOK)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-confusion/407661/27 "2007-06-13T23:27:15Z")
[QUOTE=Colophon] Hats off to the volunteers in _that_ experiment. [/QUOTE] I doubt whether the monkeys were asked though. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-confusion/407661.md?page=1)