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From First Principles

Chris Zhu 1 Episodes Jul 25, 2026

From First Principles is a documentary-style podcast that traces industries from their earliest foundations to the present day. Each season follows a single industry from the people, inventions, and ideas that started it all through the breakthroughs, failures, companies, and personalities that shaped its evolution. From Robert Goddard's first liquid-fueled rockets to SpaceX's reusable launch systems, from the invention of the shipping container to modern logistics networks, let's explore how the industries of the future were built. To understand where we're going, we start at the beginning.

Episodes

S1E2 — The Shuttle Gamble | How NASA Lost the Moon Jul 25, 2026 02:44:14 After the triumph of Apollo, NASA faced an unexpected problem: what came next?In Episode 2 of From First Principles, we explore the difficult years following the Moon landings as shrinking budgets, changing public priorities, and political realities forced NASA to reinvent itself. Rather than pushing onward to Mars, the agency bet its future on a revolutionary idea—a reusable Space Shuttle that pr

S1E1 — The Early Days | From Hitler's V2 to SpaceX's Falcon 9 May 31, 2026 02:35:28 With speculation growing around a potential SpaceX IPO, we wanted to start at the beginning.In the first episode of From First Principles, we trace the origins of modern rocketry from the ideas of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and the experiments of Robert H. Goddard to the V-2 rocket of World War II. Along the way, we explain how rockets work, why staging was such a breakthrough, and how early enthusias

From First Principles

Episodes

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