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“A thorough accounting of the growing friction between space billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, with insights from private jets and secret meetings, Twitter spats and battles for government contracts… . Davenport gently and powerfully illustrates the absurdity of certain events simply by straightforwardly describing them.”—The Washington Post“Davenport is impressively sourced and his book is a fine piece of reporting; historians will be able to use this first draft of rocket history to craft deeper analyses of our first real steps as a space-faring society.”—The New York Times Book Review“[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“Rocket Dreams … 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.”—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… . 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 an author and journalist who served as a staff writer at The Washington Post for more than twenty-five years, most recently covering space for the Financial desk. 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.