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Robert H. Goddard

lines on the record: 20
first: 2021-01-25
most recent: 2021-01-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And his frustrations and long hours of his work, but it could not conquer throat cancer. The disease had claimed his father as well. He communicated by writing on a notepad and refused to admit that he was in pain. So he was married to a very supportive wife his entire life. Her name was Esther. They were married for 21 years. She outlives them by like 37 years, and the vast majority of her life is spent building up and making sure that he got credit for all of his life's work. Esther was there day in and day out, but on the morning of August 10th, 1945, she needed to go home for a few hours. He's in the hospital. While she was gone, he died quietly. So this is a quote from one of his obituaries. Even more impressive than Dr. Goddard's technical skill, insight, and genuine where his extraordinary perseverance, patience, and courage. He carried on many of his investigations in the teeth of public skepticism and indifference with limited financial resources.”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They don't care about getting to Mars. They're trying to defeat, in this case, the Germans again and the rest of the Axis. If you're asking people for money, you should be able to tell them what they will get in return. And unfortunately, the last few years of his life, because he's dying from cancer, he never gets to see, he dies, let's see, he had this dream in 1899, dies in 1945. Humans get to the moon in 1969. So he had this idea of going to another planet in 1899. So that doesn't happen for, what, 72 years later. So it says Goddard would not see that happen because he was dying beginning in early 1943, a diary entry stating stayed in bed all day became increasingly frequent. The doctor discovered a growth in his throat and advised immediate surgery. So he does his throat cancer. His dad died of the same thing. Goddard's iron will had seen him through tuberculosis, his smoking and drinking.”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is Goddard. Again, I want to hammer this because I think it was one of the worst mistakes he made and something that we all have to understand. We need the cooperation of other humans. Even if you work alone, you need other humans to understand the value of your work. This is on his failure to get the money he needs to operate at the scale he wants. I've never had myself any great talent for selling ideas he confessed. So he's making the saint this the problem. He's making the same mistake he had in World War I and World War II. Again, if you're asking people for money, you have to be able to tell them what they're getting in return. He refused to do this. His failure to cooperate with his potential clients is the military by adapting himself and his rocketry to their needs caused them to turn down all his proposals. Why is that important? Because they're turning it, there's no money. He did not sufficiently explain how his rockets might be useful in warfare.”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was an amazing turnaround from everything Goddard had written before, an essential truth had hit him like a thunderbolt. It was fruitless to talk about roaming space until he figured out how to get there. For the first time he had placed first things first, so that's the lesson. Focus on solving the most important problem first. Don't worry about things, problems that may happen on step two, three, or four. You can solve those when you get there. He assembled a mathematical proof that it can be done. A rocket can make it into space. I haven't even mentioned the fact that he has a job while he's doing this. For most of his life, he's a part-time rocketeer. So he is a professor. There's many cases where he'll have an absence, leave of absence from his professorship. Most of the time he's going around. And the reason I couldn't help thinking about Jeff Bezos when I'm reading this book too is a lot of the book is scrounging together a little bit of money to fund his experiments. He's not a wealthy person.”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of doing two things the rising of apparatus, such as recording instruments to a great altitude and letting it fall back to the ground by suitable parachutes, and second, the sending of apparatus, so think about apparatus rockets, anything like that, okay, to such great distances from the Earth that the apparatus comes under the influence of the”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Needs to focus. He realizes he needs to focus on solving the most important problem first. I can't worry about problems that happen during space travel if I can't get off the ground. So why am I worried and he's writing thinking about what's the term like when they freeze? Is it cryogenics where it's suspended animation where they freeze humans and hopefully they can bring them back to life in the future? He had all these weird ideas that you sound like science fiction in a lot of ways about how to make humans travel through space for 10,000 years and survive or a million years or whatever the case is. He's really like, this is a giant waste of time. Now he realizes this now, but he also never his wandering mind is something that stays with him up until the very end. Anyway, so it says God had worked his way out of the early confusion to produce what would become his magnum opus under the title The Problem of Raising a Body to Great Altitude Above the Surface of the Earth. It began. The problem is concerned with the practice.”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ensure our survival. Drawing upon a prediction by astronomer Sir George Darwin that the Moon would someday crash into the Earth, Goddard began. This is a direct quote from him. From an economic point of view, the navigation of interplanetary space must be effected to ensure the continuance of the race. And if we feel that evolution has through the ages reach its highest point in man, the continuation of life and progress must be the highest end and aim of humanity so that these words could easily come out of Elon's and variations have come out of Elon Musk's mouth. So says progress must be the highest end and aim of humanity. And it's cessation the greatest possible calamity. So this entire time, up until this point, I should say, his goal is like, I want to get humans to Mars, right? And then he realizes the lesson, and what I'm about to read to you is,”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The doctors examined me again in June. So this is a few months after, and he said he never expected to see me as well as I was, but I should never do any more research and I should live a great deal outdoors. I told him there were some things I just couldn't help working on. So now I want to get into why. What are some of his motivations? He's not like the Russian version of Goddard that thinks that humans came from a different, like, we're meant to be in the cosmos. Earth is not our natural home. And coming across research and reading about why he wants to do this, one, you're going to see what I'm about to read to you. This sounds a lot like Elon Musk. And the other thing is I thought humorous that people used to believe that the moon was going to crash into the earth. And Goddard used that as a motivation to make humans a multi-planetary species.”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Contracted tuberculosis. And so the doctors fear that the same, he had a lingering cough and a cold and congestion that just wouldn't go away. So a doctor comes to examine him and tells him at 26 years old that you're dying, that you have two weeks to live. And this is where we see the free-thinking Goddard who comes up with his own treatment. They had agreed that he'd come down with the disease that was killing his mother. They gave him two weeks to live. He wrote to his grandmother in Princeton and asked her to pack up his papers and bring them to him because he feared that he might die without leaving proof of his ideas behind. Goddard's boyhood pension for demonstrating the truth of impossibilities drove what happened next. He engineered his own regimen, devised experiments in deep breathing, and spent most of his time on his parents' verandah, this is in the middle of the winter in the northeast, heavily wrapped in blankets while filling his lungs with the fridge.”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we obviously know that he doesn't stick with that feeling for very long. He's like, okay, it's physically impossible. I just got to figure out how to do it. And so I need to, as he's working his way through this and realizing, well, let me read this paragraph first, and then I'm going to get to the Russian version of Goddard. Before reaching space by rocket could be proved feasible, rigorous mathematics had to address the problem. That Goddard recognized was the major challenge facing him in 1909. What he did not know was that another mathematically inclined physicist had beaten him to the punch. So remember at the very beginning where Lindbergh's like, hey, the German just copied Goddard's ideas. He had a lot of his patents were in the public domain. People were reading them and building on them. The author makes a case that that may not be true, that there was parallel developments. We've seen this in the history of technology several times in Russia, Germany, and America at the same time. So I want to introduce you to what...”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And finally, if there's no law against it, then it will happen one day. He had reached a preliminary conclusion that it would be possible to get an object from Earth into outer space, and the way to do that would be by using rockets. It had not been an easy road to that end, as the notebooks filled up with speculations, questioning, doubting, rejection, and fresh approaches. In march nineteen oh six, this is seven years after he had that daydream in the cherry tree. That happened in 1899. So we're seven years later. In March 1906, he nearly gave up writing in his diary that he had decided today that space navigation is a physical impossibility that I could possibly leave on this page is I'm always interested in contemplating these alternate paths that we can take depending on the decisions that we make. What would his life be if he quit here?”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Combs, who taught the young Goddard how to express the ideas rolling through his mind. Goddard had developed a lifelong routine, he divided his day into two parts work or school during the day, and an evening devoted to writing down his suggestions and his ideas on science and technology. Goddard reviewed his years of intellectual floundering and confessed to belts of laziness and changing interest as a youngster. He was still unsure of his footing. And so around this time of life, we see this waffling back and forth. Like, I have this dream, I have this desire, but right now I think it's impossible everybody else thinks it's impossible. Maybe I should give up. Okay, no, no, I'm really passionate about this. I'm not going to give up and going back and back and forth. I want to draw your attention to some of his aphorisms so we see the what was his mind like as a young college student. So I'm just going to read some aphorisms that he wrote down from his diary. It says the diary.”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing in high school, and he reread them with immature or amateurish maybe is the better word. And so he decides to light them afire. Then his inherent optimism and determination reasserted themselves. Quote from Goddard, the dream would not down. And inside of two months, I caught myself making notes of further suggestions, for even though I reasoned with myself that the thing was impossible, meaning getting to Mars, there was something inside me which simply would not stop working. So now he gets to college and a few things, important things happen. One, he finds two very important teachers that encourage him along the path that he's pursuing, right? Then we see that he develops this lifelong routine, and we also see more of the uncertainty that's very common in young people. Not sure what to do with their life. Two teachers had a special influence on him. One was the head of the physics program, Wilmer Duff, who was a very demanding applied physicist and a pioneer in fields ranging from acoustics and ballistics to electricity. The other was an English professor. I don't know how to pronounce his first name, so we're just going to call him Professor.”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he did actually go and seek out people that had access to resources or knowledge that he did not have. So I'm fast forwarding. We're going to get to the end of Goddard's High School, and he winds up being essentially what people consider the smartest person in school. He'd been selected to give the class oration as the best student. He titled his speech on taking things for granted. And this is where I'm going to have to mention Jeff again. It's amazing to me the parallels between Goddard and Bezos. Goddard is about to give his speech on”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get it, he barked at the 28 year old. So in this case, in the case of Goddard, we have him yelling at his own self. He's like, hey, I need to go barking at his own self. I don't have the information I need. I need to go seek out people that do have this information. And in his life, even though he's accused of being really secretive and more...”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the time, and he's seeking his advice. He's like, Well, I don't know this part. Maybe I should just give it like hand off what I know so far to somebody else that has this knowledge, and then we can complete the project. So let me read from that book real quick. He says, he told the eager young inventor that his idea was the germ of a great invention, since he lacked the necessary electrical knowledge, he asked Dr. Henry, should he allow others to work out the commercial application? Dr. Henry didn't pause for a minute. If this young Scotsman, meaning Alexander Grambell, was going to get the commercial payoff from his invention, he simply had to acquire an understanding of electricity.”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He had been floundering in ignorance, trying to solve problems without knowing what he was doing. This made me realize that if a way to navigate space were to be discovered or invented, it would be the result of a knowledge of physics and mathematics. So that's what he's going to dedicate his life to studying. He enrolled in high school as a sophomore in 1901, just before his 19th birthday. Goddard was eager to learn and he was even more eager to do. I have no idea why, but when I read that section, I thought of this paragraph in the biography of Alexander Graham Bell, the book's called Reluctant Genius. I covered maybe a few months ago by now. But at the time, Alexander Graham Bell's 28 years old, he's on the cusp of his invention of the telephone, but he realizes that he's missing, there's a couple parts of knowledge that he's missing. So he's meeting with this older successful inventor. I think the guy's like close to seven years.”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More on the importance of this event in his life. He repeatedly photographed the site of the event and remarked October 19th annually in his diary as Anniversary Day. So it's almost like he, instead of celebrating his birthday every year, he celebrates the day that he found his life's purpose. He dated the beginnings of both his interest in space travel and his scientific career from this experience and rated nearly every event of his life thereafter as very purposeful. This is the birth of his technological optimism, the very idea of interplanetary travel lit a fire in him. He reread Vernon Wells many times and never shook off the sense of infinite possibilities that they inspired. If the human mind could conceive of such things, the young Goddard wondered, could it not also figure out a way to do them? And after the realization of his dream or his purpose in life, he realizes, hey, I don't actually have enough knowledge on how to do this. So he winds up being able to enroll in high school. So it says he realized that”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“by virtue of the greater centrifugal force at the top of the path. I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended. For existence at last seemed very purposeful, so he's telling us he found this dream reading the book and having this daydream wind up giving him what eventually becomes his life's purpose.”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He has in 1899. And this is something he references for the rest of his entire life. This is now Goddard writing. I climbed a tall cherry tree at the back of the barn. I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars. This is the very first inclination where he's going to be led to, hey, how do I get off this planet and go to Mars, which leads to his lifelong career in rocketry. So it says, and how it looks on a small scale, if sent up from the metal at my feet. I have several photographs of the tree taken since with the little ladder I made to climb it, leaning against it. It seemed to me then that a weight whirling around a horizontal shaft, moving rapidly scrabbing what, a rocket, right? Could furnish”
2021-01-25 · Founders · #164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source