The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos

321 Pages·2018·11.38 MB·English

by  Christian Davenport

Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Christian Davenport
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First Edition: March 2018
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Davenport,
Christian, author.
Title: The space barons : Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the quest to colonize the
Title: The space barons : Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the quest to colonize the
cosmos/Christian Davenport.
Description: First edition. | New York : PublicAffairs, [2018] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017053089 ISBN 9781610398299 (hardcover) | ISBN
9781610398305 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Space industrialization—United
States. | Industrialists—United States—Biography. | Aerospace engineers—
United States—Biography. | Bezos, Jeffrey. | Musk, Elon. | Blue Origen (Firm) |
SpaceX (Firm) | Aerospace industries—United States. | Outer space—Civilian
use.
Classification: LCC TL789.85.A1 D38 2018 | DDC 338.7/6294092273 [B]—
dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053089
ISBNs: 978-1-61039829-9 (hardcover); 978-1-61039830-5 (e-book) E3-
20180227-JV-PC
CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
INTRODUCTION “Touchdown”
TIMELINE
PART I IMPOSSIBLE
CHAPTER 1 “A Silly Way to Die”
CHAPTER 2 The Gamble
CHAPTER 3 “Ankle Biter”
CHAPTER 4 “Somewhere Else Entirely”
CHAPTER 5 “SpaceShipOne, GovernmentZero”
PART II IMPROBABLE
CHAPTER 6 “Screw It, Let’s Do It”
CHAPTER 7 The Risk
CHAPTER 8 A Four-Leaf Clover
CHAPTER 9 “Dependable or a Little Nuts?”
CHAPTER 10 “Unicorns Dancing in the Flame Duct”
PART III INEVITABLE
CHAPTER 11 Magic Sculpture Garden
CHAPTER 12 “Space Is Hard”
CHAPTER 13 “The Eagle Has Landed”
CHAPTER 14 Mars
CHAPTER 15 “The Great Inversion”
EPILOGUE Again, the Moon
PHOTOS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INDEX
For Heather
All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you
see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that
isn’t even visible.
—NORMAN MACLEAN, A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT
INTRODUCTION
“Touchdown”
T
HEY CAUGHT THEIR first glimpse of it at 25,000 feet and falling fast. Normally,
a rocket dropping like a bomb would be cause for panic. But instead, the four
hundred or so people gathered in the employee lounge at Blue Origin’s
headquarters outside Seattle were thrilled to see the booster plummeting toward
Earth.
“Estimate ten seconds to engine start,” the flight controller announced.
The employees, mostly engineers, were packed in, watching the rocket in free
fall on a giant screen. Some had their hands over their mouth. Others sat forward
with fists clenched. Mostly, they were silent, waiting for what would happen
next.
“Engine start,” said the flight controller. “We have thrust.”
At that, the employees started cheering wildly. Just minutes before on this
morning three days before Thanksgiving in 2015, the engine had fired to lift the
rocket off the launchpad at Blue Origin’s West Texas test site, flying it faster
than the speed of sound past the 62-mile threshold that’s considered the edge of
space. But now that the rocket was falling back, the thrust had the opposite
effect: it was slowing the rocket down, preventing it from slamming into the
ground and exploding.
Soon the rocket’s altitude was 2,000 feet.
Then 1,000.
500.
As the ground came into view, fire from the engine kicked up a plume of
dust. The employees at Blue Origin rose to their feet in unison. The rocket was
under control, descending gently, like a hot-air balloon coming in for a landing.
“One hundred and fifty feet,” the flight controller called out.
“Seventy feet.”
“Fifty feet. Velocity steady.”
There was one last flash of the engines, a bright orange glow shining through