Rocket Dreams

A new space age is under way, and it is defined by rivalries and alliances: Elon Musk against Jeff Bezos, China against the United States, and government against the private sector. The stakes are billions of dollars, national prestige and a place in history. After decades in which the American space program seemed to have lost its momentum, a fleet of powerful new rockets is about to carry people into space more often than ever. A lunar land rush has set off geopolitical competition among nations, and the two richest men in the world are locked in escalating one-upmanship while NASA and the U.S. government turn to Silicon Valley-style innovation to revive the country's ambitions.

Christian Davenport, a Washington Post reporter, chronicles the scramble to shape humanity's future beyond Earth. He takes readers behind the scenes at NASA and the Pentagon, where China's aggressive plans for mining the moon are raising alarms. He goes inside the sprawling Cape Canaveral factory where Blue Origin is working toward Amazon-style deliveries to the moon, and onto the SpaceX launch pads, where Musk's engineers put in 100-hour weeks and veteran astronauts compare the vehicles to flying phones.

The book asks what happens when human ambition outruns government regulation, which country will win the race back to the moon, and whether the creation of the Space Force, widely mocked under Donald Trump, was a surprising bit of foresight. It also asks whether the U.S. will finally commit to the moon and eventually Mars. Davenport's account is based on close reporting and suggests that the space visions of science fiction may soon become real.