Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space

What a great book on the future of private space! I hope the author will write "Rocketeers 2.0" real soon. Looking forward to following his career as a free-lance author. His contacts in the infant civilian rocket sector will pay major dividends for valuable future history of the civilian rocket boom years

Finally the Americans we (foreigners) have all admired in the past, are coming back to life. This book is a well written "easy read", about American entrepreneurs doing what Americans do best ... inspire the rest of us with new exciting things e.g. (almost) affordable space flight for all. It doesn't get too bogged down in technicalities, but gives you a nice insiders view of these small companies and the people in them. Read this book to give you inspiration or just to cheer yourself up ... after watching the latest TV newsreal about the latest multi-million dollar "precision guided munitions" destroying some simple schmucks in a cave in who-knows-where ...

To cut to the chase, if you want to buy a book on the private space industry this year, buy Rocketeers by Michael Belfiore. It is a brilliant look at the recent history of private companies trying to get into space and make a dollar by someone who was at ground zero. It is an easy read for anyone regardless of technical background. For those of you who interested in more detail, Rocketeers starts out at the second X-Prize flight of SpaceShipOne, as Mr. Belfiore takes us from the VIP section at Mojave back through the Apollo era at NASA and its effect on him. I identified with his excitement and later disappointment at where NASA took us in space. He follows the history of the X-Prize starting with Peter Diamandis' ingénues idea to have a prize for going to space. All this leads up to a word picture of what it felt like to see Brian Binnie break the 62-mile invisible wall into space. This marks the beginning of the modern private space age. Rocketeers takes us to an in-depth peek into most of the major private space companies. He talks with the visionaries and engineers (and even passengers) from the most successful businesses, such as SpaceX, to ill-fated endeavors, like the da Vinci Project and everyone in-between including Bigelow Aerospace, RocketPlane, the Rocket Racing League, and Virgin Galactic. Moreover, he looks at each of these without judgment on their chance of success or importance. He simply reports what they are doing and why and lets the reader decide who is worth watching. Before you accuse me of taking bribes from Harper Collins or Mr. Belfiore, there are some less than perfect parts of the book. First, the flow-of-consciousness science fiction style Mr. Belfiore uses, while working very well for a first pass through, makes it a little difficult to go back and find some tidbit of info to impress your friends. I would highly recommend Rocketeers for anyone interested where the next 50 years of space travel is going.

Fairly short and easy to read magazine-style investigative-journalistic human interest narrative about some of the exciting people and companies involved in America's burgeoning private space industry: the X Prize, Burt Rutan, Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk, Robert Bigelow and a few others. I thought the best chapters were about Burt Rutan and winning the XPrize, in particular the blow by blow account of all the troubles they had, very edge of the seat; also the backgrounds of Elon Musk and Robert Bigelow. As a journalistic work it is ephemeral and will be outdated (except as a source for later writers) but if your fascinated by the events, people and rocket ships, this is an excellent overview valuable right now, it's still too early to write the history. Belfiore writes for a number of periodicals like Popular Science, Wired, New Scientists, and claims to be one of only a few who are covering this exciting new industry, so he will certainly be an author to watch in the years ahead.

For anyone who, as a kid, sat enthralled in front of the television watching men walk on the moon, or anyone interested in where space travel may be heading in the future, this is the book for you. I stumbled across it accidentally on its first day of publication and finished it the next. Belfiore does a great job covering the landscape of current commercial space projects and the entrepreneurs trying to open space to all. I've read about many of the companies covered in the book before, but Belfiore provides a deeper insight into the fascinating people behind the companies and their dreams for space travel. Belfiore has a clean writing style that makes for a fast-paced read. The book ends with a bit of speculative fiction about what might develop in the future from these commercial space endeavors. If only a tenth of it comes true, I hope I'm around to see it. I recently spent a few days at a NASA facility with a group of teachers. I asked them the same question that Robert Bigalow asks in the book, "What is America's inspiration today?" They didn't have an answer. Neither did I. And I didn't see an answer during my NASA visit. NASA is doing some great things with what they have, but they seem a somewhat demoralized by the fickleness of political support and funding. Who can blame them? Surrounded by mothballed and rusting test stands and equipment, it certainly wasn't the NASA of my youth or the Apollo program. However, the commercial space guys seem to be a breed of their own. A group of dreamers, entrepreneurs and space buffs, some using their own money, trying to open space to regular folks. I think the commercial space pioneers described in the book could provide the excitement and possibly the inspiration we desperately need in this country. Sure, it's a long shot, but I think it might be the best one we have. I'm looking forward to it.