Rocket Dreams

'A thrilling account' - Walter IsaacsonMusk versus Bezos. China versus the United States. The government versus the private sector. Welcome to the rivalries and alliances defining the New Space Age. At stake? Billions of dollars, national prestige, and a place in the history books.A fleet of powerful new rockets is poised to take humans into the cosmos more than ever before. A lunar land rush has sparked a geopolitical competition among nations. And the world's two richest men have engaged in escalating brinkmanship, as NASA and the US government embraces Silicon Valley innovation to jump-start the nation's ambitions.Space has entered a golden age, and this is just the beginning. In this gripping work, award-winning Washington Post writer Christian Davenport chronicles the mad scramble to shape humanity's off-planet future. He takes readers behind the scenes at NASA and the Pentagon as China's aggressive moon mining plans raise alarms, onto the sprawling Cape Canaveral factory where Blue Origin is working toward Amazon-style lunar deliveries, and onto SpaceX launch pads as Musk's engineers log 100-hour weeks - leaving veteran astronauts marvelling that they're now operating 'flying iPhones.'What will happen as human ambition outpaces governmental regulation? Which country will win the race back to the moon? Was Donald Trump's much-derided creation of the Space Force a surprising act of foresight, and will the US finally make a real push to the moon and eventually toward Mars?Masterfully paced, rigorously reported and vividly told, Rocket Dreams offers a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of the grit-fuelled global battle to push humankind further into the cosmos -revealing that the science fiction dreams of the last century may soon become our reality.

Christian Davenport is a staff writer at The Washington Post covering the space and defense industries 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 and a Peabody Award for his work on veterans with traumatic brain injuries. As a frequent radio and television commentator, he has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, CBS, PBS NewsHour and several NPR shows.