Get to the Moon, Even If No One’s Listening
John Houbolt wasn’t the face of Apollo, but he made the moon landing possible. He pitched Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, ignored the naysayers, and kept showing up. Break the mold, persist alone, and fight for your idea—the launchpad starts with stubborn belief.
It Starts with a Quiet “What If”
Every big leap has a backstage. A name you never heard. A voice that nearly got drowned out. And in The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon, Todd Zwillich pulls one of those voices forward.
John Houbolt wasn’t the face of Apollo. He wasn’t even supposed to be in the room. But he’s the reason we got to the moon.
While NASA’s top minds pushed for direct ascent or Earth Orbit Rendezvous, Houbolt pitched something radically different: Lunar Orbit Rendezvous. Land a tiny module on the moon. Leave the main ship in orbit. Then dock back up and come home. Lighter. Faster. Riskier.
Most people thought he was wrong. Or annoying. Or both.
He wrote long, desperate memos. Worked alone. Ignored. Ridiculed. But he kept showing up. Not because it was his job. Because he knew the math worked—and that the other plans didn’t.
And that stubbornness? That’s the heartbeat of every breakthrough.
You can trace the arc from Houbolt’s blueprint to the moon itself. Every thruster burn on Apollo 11’s descent. Every mid-course correction. All of it riding on the structure he fought to prove. He didn’t build the rocket. He changed the plan. And that changed everything.
It’s the ultimate founder move: bet the mission on an idea no one believes in. Stick with it long enough that they have no choice.
And if you squint, you’ll see Houbolt’s story play out again and again.
Grace Hopper debugging the first computers while everyone else tried to stay out of her way. Elon Musk betting everything on a rocket that exploded three times. Indie hackers today—working solo, shipping invisible updates, making micro-decisions that change entire product trajectories.
Zwillich’s book gives us more than a story. It gives us a playbook for stubborn builders:
Plan like it matters. Detail counts. Math counts. But hold your strategy loosely. Adjust when the truth shows up.
Respect persistence. The kind that feels dumb. The kind that gets ignored. The kind that keeps going anyway.
Break the mold. Process is helpful—until it becomes a wall. The big jumps? They usually come from coloring outside the spec.
Go solo—but not forever. Convince one person. Then two. Then enough to shift the room.
The real lesson? The obvious things in hindsight were anything but obvious in the moment.
Moon landings don’t start with countdowns. They start with memos. With lonely convictions. With someone doing the math no one else wants to look at. And then fighting to be heard.
So next time you're at the edge of your own launchpad—be it a product, a pitch, a new idea in a room that’s not listening—remember this:
Some of the most important missions didn’t happen because everyone agreed. They happened because someone refused to shut up.
That’s how you get to the moon.
And maybe, how you get wherever you're trying to go.