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How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space
Collins
August 2007
On Sale: July 31, 2007
305 pages
ISBN: 0061149020
EAN: 9780061149023
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
In the more than forty years since the first human left the
atmosphere of Earth, no one had ever done so without the
help of a government agency. That changed on June 21, 2004,
when SpaceShipOne, built by aircraft designer Burt Rutan,
entered space and ushered in the commercial space age. Investment capital began to pour into the new commercial
spaceflight industry. Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic will
begin ferrying space tourists out of the atmosphere in 2009.
Las Vegas hotelier Robert Bigelow is spending $500 million
of his personal fortune to develop the world's first
commercial space station (i.e., space hotel). Former PayPal
CEO Elon Musk is developing orbital spacecraft to service
Bigelow's space station. Others want to tap the vast natural
resources of space, including unlimited solar power. These
space entrepreneurs, including Microsoft cofounder Paul
Allen and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, now see space as
the Next Big Thing. In Rocketeers, Michael Belfiore goes behind the scenes of
this nascent industry, capturing its Wild West,
anything-goes flavor, enhanced by the fact that most of the
players live and work in California, New Mexico, Texas, and
other western states, with plenty of open space for rocket
launching. Likening his research to "hanging out in the
Wright brothers' barn," Belfiore offers an inspiring and
entertaining look at people who are not afraid to make their
bold dreams a reality.
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