Liftoff : Elon Musk and the desperate early days that launched SpaceX /

Tech billionaire Elon Musk set out to revolutionize the space industry, and founded aerospace company SpaceX in the hope of one day landing humans on Mars. Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, was granted unprecedented access to interview Musk, as well as current and former employees of SpaceX, and here shares first-hand accounts of their experiences. The main focus isn't Musk himself, but the engineers, technicians, vice presidents, and lieutenants: passionate and driven people bold enough to take on Musk's ambitious vision. Berger shares how they came to work for Musk, their experiences of toil and sweat, uncertainty and victory. There's very little technical detail in this book; instead, it's a story about people and their faith in one man's compelling mission. What stands out most is the author's command of pacing. He depicts race-against-the-clock crises as fast-paced as a thriller, with moments reminiscent of Apollo 13 or The Martian (albeit with slightly lower stakes). An exciting and insightful read for anyone interested in the story behind the early days of SpaceX.

A visionary and his scrappy engineers weather rocket explosions and financial crises to revolutionize the space-launch industry in this exuberant debut from Ars Technica editor Berger. Elon Musk's company SpaceX was founded in 2002, and its first orbital flight was in 2008 with the Falcon 1 rocket. Now, SpaceX dominates the space-launch market with its reusable rockets and (relatively) low costs. Berger describes the white-knuckle test flights that rode on complex, finicky equipment: the first three Falcon 1 launches failed catastrophically because of a leaky valve, sloshing fuel, and a first stage that separated four seconds early (the latter mishap was almost the company's demise). Berger's colorful portrait shows Musk as a "preternatural force" of "burning intensity," driving employees toward his goal of colonizing Mars. More soberly, Berger offers a detailed account of SpaceX's "iterative design" philosophy, which emphasizes rapid prototype testing and tolerates failures as learning experiences and, he argues, avoids the bureaucracy of NASA's risk-averse process. Berger vividly weaves a tale of technology development at its most heroic, done on near-impossible deadlines in the broiling environs of southern Texas or the Marshall Islands. The result is a rousing--and hopeful--saga of hard-won innovation succeeding on an epic scale. (Mar.)

In this page-turner, award-winning journalist Berger explores the critical early days of SpaceX, the rocket manufacturing company founded by Elon Musk. The story begins in late 2000 when Musk, inspired by a conversation about space travel, researched NASA's website to see how far the agency had progressed regarding a human mission to Mars. When he discovered that NASA had no plans to do so, Musk decided to start his own company, SpaceX, with the bold idea of building spaceships to send people to Mars. Musk began to assemble a team of brilliant minds and creative engineers, including Tom Mueller, Anne Chinnery, Hans Koenigsmann, and Gwynne Shotwell. Berger examines the background of each of the team members and the circumstances that led them to join SpaceX. They would face numerous challenges: launch failures and liquid oxygen issues; excessive travel and long days and nights; and relentless pressure from Musk. Despite these challenges, they accomplished remarkable things, which culminated in the launch of the Falcon 1 rocket on its fourth attempt on September 28, 2008--the first ever privately funded rocket to go into orbit. VERDICT An extraordinary story of compelling narrative nonfiction that is recommended for those interested in space travel or for anyone looking for an exciting read.--Dave Pugl, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL

An up-close account of the otherworldly trajectory of tech magnate Elon Musk. Ars Technica editor Berger opens with a telling scene set in South Texas in late September 2019, when Musk visited a factory building a rocket that one day will be bound for Mars. Sending that ship--and people--to the red planet is of a parcel with Musk's pioneering work in "remaking the global aerospace industry," which includes privatizing efforts that had long belonged to government agencies such as NASA--which, though funded to the tune of some $25 billion per year, still "remains several giant leaps away from sending a few astronauts to Mars." Getting the SpaceX rocket safely to distant Mars "may not work," Musk confessed before adding, "But it probably will." By Berger's swiftly moving account, it will, not just because Musk is an endlessly driven, intensely focused sort who could use a little more fun in life--at one point, Musk ruefully allows that "it wouldn't have hurt to have just one cocktail on the damn beach" of a distant Pacific atoll used in test flights--but also because Musk is surrounded by brilliant scientists recruited from academia and industry who are thoroughly invested in the project's success. "They want that golden ticket for the world's greatest thrill ride," Berger writes, evoking another obsessed genius, Willie Wonka. Musk now leads not just SpaceX, but also the Tesla electric automobile company as well as a neural technology company and a firm devoted to digging new transportation tunnels below overcrowded cities. Even so, he remains closely attentive to matters that aviation engineers have often overlooked, such as recycling rocket stages: "If an airline discarded a 747 jet after every transcontinental flight," writes the author, "passengers would have to pay $1 million for a ticket." Readers interested in business and entrepreneurship, as well as outer space, will find Berger's book irresistible. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.