New space frontier

I thoroughly enjoyed When The Heavens Went on Sale, a new book by Ashlee Vance that recounts in entertaining detail the creation of the new space frontier: scrappy startups inventing small, fast, cheap rockets and satellites, and against all odds, succeeding where NASA could not. The cast of misfits, bigger-than-life visionaries, genius jerks, and admirable old-school engineers is vast, and way beyond Elon Musk (who only appears in Ashlee Vance’s other book, a Musk biography). Vance spent many years hanging out on this frontier, attending endless test failures, hearing the intimate dreams of the makers, and via this deep immersion, he explains in thrilling detail the innovations and technology that has created this new industry. An excellent documentary was filmed in parallel with the book, Wild, Wild Space (HBO Max) and it gives you a great sense of the key characters in this new wild, wild west. — KK