Liftoff: The inside story of Elon Musk, SpaceX and the dramatic origins of the world’s leading rocket company

The company which chsnged rockets. This is all about the early days of how the conpany started and finally succeeded in successfully launching Falcon 1. The same author has written Reentry which covers the Falcon 9 story. You learn about the people,the hard work, the highs and lows which have changed things for the world Not the faster, better, cheaper failures of ZZZNASA in the 1990s, but the better way, cheaper and faster of Musk and SpaceX. Well worth reading and learning about a Yes, it can be done approach to things.

Very well put together story. Extraordinary happenings on the way to Falcon 9 success.

In the summer of 2019, I relived the moon landing through two great pieces of audiovisual media. The BBC World Service podcast "13 Minutes To The Moon", a deep dive into the entire Apollo programme, and the same story told visually in Todd Douglas Miller's astonishing "Apollo 11", which I would urge you to see on as big a screen as possible.They both reawakened a long dormant interest in space for me. I read a lot of tech news, so had vague awareness of the big milestones of SpaceX, but can't claim to have followed them.So from that point on, I immersed myself in both the spaceflight history of a half century or more ago, and the spaceflight present; where once or twice a month - sometimes once or twice a *week*, SpaceX put a payload in orbit then bring back the first stage of the rocket that did it. Kennedy may have said, "we do these things not because they were easy, but because they are hard"; yet SpaceX have made launches seem as routine as a supermarket shop.Eric Berger's book shows you, starting from zero, how they got there - through teamwork and the efforts of many individuals, many of whose stories we hear in detail as the narrative thrums along. Like so many American journalists. Berger has the ability to conjure an evocative sense of place and time; and there is one sequence in particular that cries out to be dramatised in a big budget movie one day.If there is a downside then its an inevitable one when dealing with billionaires like Musk. There's no doubt the book has benefited from astonishing levels of access to the key players, but there are only a couple of places that are less than hagiographic in their treatment of his flawed genius. But this is a minor quibble, because it's not about Musk.

An exciting and detailed expose of the early years of SpaceX. Well recommended.

This book covers the early days of SpaceX up to the successes of the Falcon 9. I found it it to be a well written and coherent tale - there are many parallel stories of the personnel and they are told without losing the timeline! I would definitely recommend this.

I got this book as I recently became an avid follower of the modern day space race.But what I didn't know much about was how & why Elon Musk got started with Space X.Eric Berger takes the reader from the beginning right up to the successful first flights of the falcon 1 & how that led on to the falcon 9.You don't need an engineering degree to follow this book. It focuses primarily on the human stories, the struggles and the hardship and the joyous moments too. The author was given full access to the staff, and weaves a great narrative from their accounts that's both an enjoyable read and very insightful. He doesn't shy away from hard truths, Elon Musk does not always come up smelling of roses & it's all the better for that.

This is a fantastic book. I've followed SpaceX since before their first launch attempt in 2006 and read a lot about the company over the years. There is still much in this book that was either new to me or for the first time gave the detailed inside track on what really happened. Eric Berger has collected together a wonderful set of stories about the early years of SpaceX from the people who were there. A real strength of the book is the breadth of people involved. Elon remains the driving force behind the company, but it's great to read about so many others' huge contributions. Including people not in the public eye and who are not known outside the core space community.Buy this book, you won't regret it.

I'm a huge Elon fan, I follow him relentlessly and read everything I can. This book takes you on a fantastic journey from the mad hat vision to where SpaceX is now.What I like about the book is the way the employees are depicted. We all know Elon is a great visionary but without such a great tribe he wouldn't be as successful.The stories are fascinating and demonstrate the dedication of the employees at SpaceX, they all believed in the vision and gave up so much to make it happen.I think this book should be dedicated to the fantastic staff who helped make Elons vision come to reality.Great read