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A key advance was the invention of the first liquid-fuelled rocket in 1926 by the American Robert Goddard in Auburn, Massachusetts. Goddard is considered to be one of the fathers of the modern rocket era.
As NASA began to plan retirement for the Space Shuttle, private companies began work on spacecraft to replace it. One of these companies, SpaceX, became the first to launch a privately funded liquid-fueled rocket into Orbit, the Falcon 1.