When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach

In this exciting account, Vance (Elon Musk), a journalist at Bloomberg Businessweek, shines light on some of the lesser known private sector efforts to capitalize on outer space, telling how aerospace companies Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs, and Rocket Lab have used scrappiness and innovation in their quest to turn a profit from rockets and satellites. Vance details engineers’ sometimes harebrained schemes and recounts how Planet Labs cofounders Will Marshall and Chris Boshuizen got their start in 2009 at NASA by tucking a smartphone into a rocket to see if it could take pictures from space (it could), giving them the idea to photograph the Earth with a battery of cheap satellites. The author provides finely observed portraits of the figures behind the aerospace companies, describing how Chris Kemp’s disregard for the rules helped get the rocket company Astra off the ground, as well as relating how Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck, “a self-taught rocket scientist who never went to college... managed to build a rocket company in New Zealand, which had no aerospace industry on which to lean.” The focus on figures outside the limelight offers a fresh look at the new space race, and Vance’s feels-like-you’re-there storytelling captures the “spectacular madness” of the moonshots. It’s The Right Stuff for the silicon age. (May)