#164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer, but if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. Frank Browning ceased to exist at 6:43 p.m. on Friday, September 8th, 1944
The street erupted as he walked down Stavely Road in London, smashing the houses on both sides and killing him instantly.
Rescue squads found one other dead and 20 injured in the rubble of their houses, which surrounded a crater 30 feet wide and 10 feet deep in the center of the concrete roadway. So began Nazi Germany's V2 campaign, a barrage of stratospheric ballistic missiles bearing one-tum bombs. They dropped without warning.
They were remarkably sophisticated machines powered by liquid fuel rockets and guided by gyroscopes and tail fins.
How had America's enemy developed such a monstrous contraption?
The answer was not long in coming. On January 19th, 1945, the new service of the National Geographic Society in Washington DC told the world that the fiendish Germans had stolen the whole idea from an American. The V2 was a larger copy of designs worked out before the war by Dr. Robert H. Goddard, a physicist working in isolation near Roswell, New Mexico.
So closely do the mechanical features of the V2 parallel the American projectile that some physicists think the Germans may have actually copied most of the design, said the report.
Most of these features were patented by Dr. Goddard between 1914 and 1932
It was a perfect wartime picture. Strutting Nazis contrasted with a modest American inventor, pilfering his peaceful efforts to explore the upper atmosphere in order to bring death and terror to innocent Allied civilians.
The story spread far and wide and it endured. Goddard himself did not, dying the following August. His obituaries credited him with inventing nearly everything to do with rocketry and with being the real inventor of the V2.
He had been supported in his labors by Charles Lindbergh, perhaps the most famous human on the planet.
He participated in Allied examination of the German aviation and rocket programs after the Germans surrendered in May 1945 and co-authored a scathing report claiming that with weapons such as the V2, the Nazis had come close to winning the war.
It was time for the American government to stop neglecting visionary geniuses like Goddard and start embracing the technology of the future. To that end, Lindbergh secured a consultant's position to advise the government in rocketry and space research.
When the chief of the Air Force asked Lindbergh what he hoped to gain, Lindbergh pointed out that while the Army was preparing to steal the Nazi missile systems, it should acknowledge that many vital features of them were of American origin.
Lindbergh wanted only one thing in return for his work, justice for Bob Goddard.
Who was Goddard and what justice was owed to him?
That was an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Rocket Man, Robert H. Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age, and it was written by David A. Clary. And this is another example of a book that I only found because a listener recommended that I read it. I wanna put it into context with the larger discussion we have, and I wanna tie this to another entrepreneur that we've studied extensively in this podcast, and that's Jeff Bezos. All the way back, I think it might be Founders 38, somewhere in there, I read the book called The Space Parents.
And that book, what I focused on in doing that podcast was mainly the differing strategies that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were using to accomplish similar goals.