When The Heavens Went On Sale
The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
*An instant New York Times Bestseller*
'One of the most exciting tales of our time... It's the next tech frontier, and Vance turns it into a thriller' Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs
'Eloquent, expertly reported' Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store
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A momentous look at the private companies driving the revolutionary new space race, from the 3-million copy, New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk
In 2008, Elon Musk's SpaceX became the first private company to build a low-cost rocket that could reach orbit. Suddenly Silicon Valley, not NASA, was the epicentre of the new Space Age.
Ashlee Vance follows four pioneering companies - Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs and Rocket Lab - as they race to control access to outer space. While the space tourism ambitions of billionaires such as Bezos and Branson make headlines, these under-the-radar companies are striving to monetise Earth's lower orbit; to connect, analyse and monitor everything on Earth.
With unprecedented access to private company headquarters, labs and top-secret launch locations - from the US to New Zealand, Ukraine to India - Vance presents a gripping account of private jets, communes, gun-toting bodyguards, drugs, espionage investigations and multimillionaires guzzling booze as their fortunes disappear.
This is the most pressing and controversial technology story of our time. Welcome to the new Wild West above the clouds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
