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When the heavens went on sale : the misfits and geniuses racing to put space within reach / Ashlee Vance.

by Vance, Ashlee.

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Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2023.

338.76294 V222w

Rockets (Aeronautics) -- Research -- History.

Space industrialization -- United States.

Outer space -- Civilian use.

9780062998873 (hc.)

Alternate title:

Misfits and geniuses racing to put space within reach

513 p. : ill. (chiefly col.), map ; 24 cm.

Includes index.

"With the launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2008, Elon Musk's SpaceX became the first private company to build a low-cost rocket that could reach orbit. And that milestone carried major implications: Silicon Valley, not NASA, was suddenly cemented as the epicenter of the new Space Age. Start-ups and the wealthy investors behind them began to realize that the universe -- ungoverned and infinite -- was open for business. Welcome to the wild West of aerospace engineering. The book tells the remarkable, unfolding story of this frenzied intergalactic land grab. Through his trademark immersive reporting, Ashlee Vance follows four pioneering companies -- Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs, and Rocket Lab -- as they build new space systems and attempt to launch rockets into orbit. While the public fixated on the space tourism being driven by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson, these new companies arrived with a different set of goals: to make rocket and satellite launches fast and cheap, thereby opening Earth's lower orbit for business -- and setting it up as the next playing field for humankind's technological evolution, where we can connect, analyze, and monitor everything on Earth. Vance has had a front row seat and singular access to this peculiar and unprecedented moment in history. The book travels through private company headquarters, labs, and top-secret launch locations around the world, including California, Texas, Alaska, New Zealand, Ukraine, India, and French Guiana. Vance chronicles it all in full color: the private jets, communes, gun-toting bodyguards, hallucinogens, espionage investigations, and multi-millionaires guzzling booze to dull the pain as their fortunes disappear. With the most detailed and intimate reporting of Vance's career, the book reveals the spectacular chaos of the new business of space, and what happens when the idealistic, ambitious minds of Silicon Valley turn their unbridled vision toward the limitless expanse of the stars. This is the most pressing and controversial technology story of our times, a tale of fascinating characters chasing unimaginable stakes as they race to space."-- From publisher.

Ashlee Vance is the New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk and a feature writer at Bloomberg BusinessWeek. He's also the host of Hello World, a travel show that centers on inventors and scientists all over the planet. Previously, he worked as a reporter for The New York Times, The Economist, and The Register.

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