[Rockingham]

I am surprised that you are unfamiliar with the NY Times' editorial blast against Goddard. Published on January 13, 1920, the editorial insisted that a rocket couldn't possibly work in space:

That professor Goddard, with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution [from which Goddard held a grant to research rocket flight], 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.

Goddard scrupulously refuted the editorial in the Scientific American based on Newton's Third Law, but the Times nevertheless damaged his reputation. That prompted him to retreat from public life and from engagement with scientific colleagues. This impaired Goddard's ability to pursue his work, to the considerable detriment of America's scientific and technical base in rocketry.

Buhler and his team deserve a hearing. They have made a bold claim, assert that they have experimental proof, and are soliciting interest and funding to pursue it. Notably, a key benefit of capitalism is that innovators can solicit private risk capital. That requires though that innovators not be reflexively denounced as fools and frauds because they say something that contradicts current scientific thinking.

Why insist that Buhler and his associates limit themselves to work "on a reasonable scale." Just who is to determine and enforce such a limit? The SEC? The Smithsonian? The US Department of Commerce? Why not instead let investors make their own assessments and take the risk?

[House Atreides]

Excellent and thoughtful comment.

[Olog-hai]

With all due respect, why would I be familiar with very much of the NY Slimes on the scientific end? Certainly is to find out how the enemy thinks on a political basis, but in terms of other subjects they literally belch profound ignorance; once the pattern is established, it becomes a weariness to read. This rag has of course destroyed many people’s lives with their incessant mendacity and unpunished libel over the decades; it took them 49 years to “apologize” to Goddard (07/17/1969):

Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17^th 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. …

By “on a reasonable scale”, I meant in the case of Buhler actually securing taxpayer money, i.e. like people such as Solyndra did. Private capital, if he can get it, would know the risks and the way to mitigate that is of course via as much knowledge as possible of the subject soliciting the money.

[NorthMountain]

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.

Gotta love the New York Times ... vomiting forth complete rubbish for over a century.