Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are two of the richest men on the planet. In the remarkable second act of their careers, they are pitted against each other in one of the defining corporate struggles of our times: the space race - which they both believe holds more profit for the winner than even the Internet can offer.
Now Musk and Bezos are leveraging their limitless wealth and power to build a new space economy from scratch, creating an underlying infrastructure for the space economy that did not exist. The results are nothing less than pure box-office - and could forever alter the frontiers of human life.
Christian Davenport is known by and has access to both men. He has been lead space reporter at the Washington Post for over a decade, and only he can deliver this story with true insider detail.
A fleet of modern rockets among the most powerful in the world. A lunar land rush that has sparked a competition over the strategic high ground. Scientific discoveries that could offer new insights into the origins of the solar system. Escalating brinkmanship between the world's two richest men. Space has entered a golden age, and this is just the beginning. After the first Trump administration launched the Artemis program, NASA created a historic competition that pit Elon Musk's SpaceX against Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, flanked far away by Russia and China. At stake: billions of dollars, national prestige, and a place in the history books. In this gripping work, veteran reporter 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 and military plans raise alarms, onto the sprawling Cape Canaveral factory where Bezos works toward Amazon-style lunar deliveries, and onto SpaceX launch pads as Musk's engineers log 100-hour weeks, ultimately pulling off the harrowing but triumphant launch of its first human spaceflight mission. What will happen as frenetic public and private ambition outpaces governmental regulation? Who will win the race to the moon, and will the US finally be able to start a real push toward Mars? Masterfully paced, rigorously reported, and vividly told, Rocket Dreams weaves cutting-edge science with high-stakes capitalism and old-fashioned nationalism into a vision of humanity's next giant leap.
