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

by Michael Belfiore (Author)
Key Phrases: soft abort, trim stabs, commercial spaceflight, White Knight, Burt Rutan, Scaled Composites (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Touring the rapidly changing non-NASA community, Belfiore reports on the technology and business plans behind dreams of privately financed access to space. He profiles several companies active in this arena, including one that will be familiar to the news-following public, Scaled Composites. It launched an astronaut into space for a few minutes in 2004, inspiring enthusiasts and attracting paying customers. Just what customers will pay for seems speculative—a brief experience of weightlessness, a vacation in an orbital hotel, a voyage to the moon––so these companies are accordingly varied in their ambitions. Goals seem directly related to those of the company founders, and Belfiore's strong biographical sketches explain the founders' fascination with spaceflight, their rocketry skills (which range from accomplished to, in the case of mogul Richard Branson, nonexistent), and the hands-on work of their employees. Imparting the technical specs of engines and vehicles, Belfiore betters description with his evocation of the visionary euphoria that animates these entrepreneurial daredevils, sealing the deal for fans of space futurism. Taylor, Gilbert

Product Description

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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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Smithsonian (July 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061149020
• ISBN-13: 978-0061149023
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #660,646 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The future of space flight, August 19, 2007

By	David Zuchero (Highland, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nice overview, August 25, 2007

By	Stephen Balbach (Ashton, MD United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Looking forward to "Rocketeers 2.0"!, December 31, 2007

By	Curtis J. Maloy "cjmaloy" (Ozark, AL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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