The Aharonov-Bohm effect, predicted in 1959, required nearly 30 years after its 1960 demonstration by Chambers until it was begrudgingly accepted. Mayer, who discovered the modern thermodynamic notion of conservation of energy related to work, was hounded and chastised so severely that he suffered a breakdown. In the 1960s the evidence for continental drift became overwhelming, and today it is widely taught and part of the standard science curriculum. Gauss, the great mathematician, worked out nonlinear geometry but kept it firmly hidden for 30 years, because he knew that if he published it, his peers would destroy him. And as everyone knows, rocketry did indeed carry men to the moon.
Science has a long and unsavory history of severely punishing innovation and new thinking.
In the modern world such scientific suppression of innovation is uncalled-for, but it is still very much the rule rather than the exception. Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value. The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.