Robert Goddard: the obsessive persistence behind modern rocketry

Executive overview

Goddard spent 46 years turning a childhood daydream — reaching Mars — into the first successful liquid-fuelled rocket, inventing almost every foundational component of modern rocketry along the way. He worked part-time, on a shoestring, with no institutional backing, and in the face of public ridicule.

His chronic inability to sell his work to funders and the military repeatedly starved the program of money. Bezos studied Goddard closely and deliberately solved that problem before starting Blue Origin.

The person who refuses to quit, picks the right life partner, and focuses on the most important problem first will outrun almost any competitor.

The origin of a life's purpose

• At 17, after reading H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, Goddard climbed a cherry tree and imagined a device that could reach Mars.
• He marked October 19th every year in his diary as "anniversary day" — the day he found his purpose.
• He destroyed his early notebooks in a fit of self-doubt, then resumed within two months: "The dream would not down."
• Realising his experiments had outrun his knowledge, he enrolled in high school at 19 and later studied physics and mathematics.
• His graduation speech — ending "the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow" — became the most frequently quoted high school speech in history.

Overcoming physical setbacks

• A sickly child, Goddard was told at 26 he had two weeks to live from what doctors believed was tuberculosis.
• He devised his own recovery regimen: deep-breathing exercises on a snow-covered veranda in sub-zero temperatures.
• He recovered fully and continued working — telling his doctors there were things he simply could not stop working on.
• His drinking and cigar habit ultimately caused the throat cancer that killed him at 62, the same disease that killed his father.

The long road to the first flight

• From 1909 he pursued a multi-charge powder rocket for 13 years before admitting it was a dead end.
• He returned to an idea first noted in his 1909 notebook: liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as propellants.
• On March 16, 1926 — 27 years after the cherry-tree vision — he launched the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket. It rose 41 feet and travelled 184 feet.
• He compared it directly to Kitty Hawk: "As a first flight, it compares favourably with the Wright brothers' first airplane flight."
• By 1930 his best rocket reached 2,000 feet at 60 mph in seven seconds — still ahead of all competition.

The funding problem

• For most of his career Goddard was a part-time rocketeer, employed as a physics professor and dependent on grants from the Smithsonian and later the Guggenheim family.
• Charles Lindbergh — the most famous person on Earth after his transatlantic flight — became his champion and secured Guggenheim funding.
• He was chronically unable to present his work as a solution to funders' needs. The military wanted weapons that already worked; Goddard talked about reaching Mars.
• Lindbergh repeatedly urged him to chase a record-breaking altitude flight to generate publicity and secure more money. Goddard kept tweaking instead.
• Bezos, who named one of his sons Goddard and named Blue Origin's first rocket after him, solved the funding problem by building Amazon first — selling roughly $1 billion of stock per year to finance Blue Origin.

The George Clooney sales lesson

• Clooney's career turned when he stopped auditioning as "someone who wants the role" and started presenting himself as "the solution to your casting problem."
• Goddard did the opposite: he talked about his own goals instead of addressing what patrons and military clients needed.
• His failure to frame rockets as a military asset cost him years of funding during both world wars.
• If you cannot sell your work yourself, find someone who can — the inability to do either is fatal to progress.

Distraction as the other fatal flaw

• Lindbergh: "It is extremely difficult for anyone not a scientist to value scientific work without actual demonstration."
• Goddard consistently switched between improvements rather than optimising for the metric that unlocked funding: altitude.
• His diary from lean periods fills with copied aphorisms and self-pitying humour rather than experimental progress.
• He acknowledged it himself: "I've never had any great talent for selling ideas."

Parallel inventors: the three fathers of rocketry

• A Russian physicist (born 1857, nearly deaf by 13) independently derived the liquid-propellant rocket in 1895, proving mathematically that reaching space was feasible — but published in a journal almost no one read.
• A German team reached similar conclusions in parallel, producing the V2 — which the Allies initially claimed was stolen from Goddard's patents.
• All three were inspired by Jules Verne. All were mathematically-oriented teachers. All had flawed personalities and difficulty working with others, yet inspired fierce loyalty in those close to them.
• The parallel development suggests that ideas whose time has come tend to emerge independently — the builder who actually launches something wins.

What Goddard achieved

• First to launch a liquid-fuelled rocket (1926).
• First to apply a de Laval nozzle to a rocket motor.
• First to prove a rocket works in a vacuum.
• First to use an inertial guidance system, thrust vector control, a gimballed engine, and turbopumps on a rocket.
• First to send a powered vehicle faster than the speed of sound.
• 214 patents; in 1960 US federal agencies concluded no rocket or jet aircraft could fly without his inventions.

Character and legacy

• Colleagues remembered him as unflappable: his reaction to a successful flight was indistinguishable from his reaction to an explosion.
• He preached resourcefulness — salvaging parts from failed rockets to build the next, wasting nothing.
• His wife Esther spent the final 37 years of her life securing his legacy and ensuring he received credit for his work.
• He never saw humans reach space; the Apollo 11 moon landing came 24 years after his death, 70 years after his cherry-tree vision.
• The New York Times — which in 1920 mocked him for claiming rockets could work in a vacuum — issued a correction in 1969: "The Times regrets the error."

The two decisions that determine a life

• Goddard chose the right life's work and the right partner; he appeared to enjoy his life despite never seeing his dream fulfilled.
• Alfred Nobel (covered the prior week) was highly successful but miserable, in part because of a destructive personal relationship.
• Tim Urban's framework: to live a satisfying life, nail two decisions — what you do for work, and who you do it with.