Rocket Dreams

“This is a thrilling account, filled with remarkable reporting and great inside color, of the race between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to create commercial rockets. It’s an important tale of how American ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit are creating a new type of space age.”—Walter Isaacson“[Davenport] deftly blends nuanced portraits of his principals with accessible explanations of the relevant technology and fascinating space lore. Timely, thorough reporting on the companies vying for supremacy in the final frontier.”—Kirkus Reviews“A gripping, up close window into the past several years of fierce competition and achievement in space, Rocket Dreams also manages to bring out the human stories at its heart. Davenport—one of the world’s foremost space journalists—takes the reader inside the conversations where many of the most important decisions in today’s space sector were made. A remarkable achievement; I couldn’t put it down.”—Matthew Weinzierl, Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA Program at Harvard Business School“Rocket Dreams brings readers into the boardrooms and onto the private jets of the key people who brought about a spaceflight revolution over the last decade. Richly reported, it tells the essential story of how a few NASA leaders and two billionaires pushed the government to change the way humans access space forever.”—Eric Berger, author of Liftoff and Reentry“In Rocket Dreams, Christian Davenport brings the reader into the intimate conversations and decisions that have brought the space program to where it is today and where it will be in the future. It is an eye-opening account of how space exploration by countries has transformed from governments and private enterprise working together to answer scientific questions into an exciting business sector.”­—Mike Massimino, New York Times bestselling author of Spaceman“As one of the best reporters on the space beat, Christian Davenport has had a front row seat to the entire spectacular space age show, chronicling every unbelievable new milestone reached, every new rocket launched, every unplanned orbital flameout. His latest book, Rocket Dreams, is a must-read for a behind-the-scenes look at how the world’s billionaires have transformed spaceflight from a once purely government endeavor into a private sector enterprise that could change the course of humanity’s journey into the stars.”—Loren Grush, Bloomberg space reporter and author of The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts“A captivating, fast-paced account of the ambitions and rivalries of the billionaires and superpowers driving modern space exploration… . Well sourced with a surprising level of access to major players like Musk… . The book’s fly-on-the wall perspective … makes for a revealing glimpse into the egomaniacal antics, stagnant bureaucracy, and awe-inspiring advancement that define the new space age.”—Publishers Weekly

Christian Davenport is a staff writer at The Washington Post covering NASA and the space industry and the author of The Space Barons. He has been on reporting teams that were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize three times and is a recipient of an Emmy award for his work on the Discovery and Science Channels covering SpaceX’s first human spaceflight mission.