“Liftoff” Showcases the Game-Changing the Early Days of SpaceX (Book Review)
Eric Berger’s new book gives me a whole new appreciation for what Elon Musk and all of the talented engineers at SpaceX have managed to achieve.
The commercial space landscape has come a long way in the past decade. Ten years ago, SpaceX barely had any successful launches under their belt. The Space Shuttle was about to retire, and I doubt anyone around at the time would have guessed that the next time humans launched into space from American soil would be aboard a SpaceX rocket, inside a SpaceX crew capsule, only nine years later. Booster landings only existed in the imaginations of engineers, but are now so routinely successful that it’s almost jarring when a SpaceX launch doesn’t have (or attempt) a booster landing.
Eric Berger’s new book Liftoff provides a fascinating and extremely detailed account of the earliest days of SpaceX straight from the mouths of the people that were there. He interviews not only Elon himself, but many of the first cohort of employees. You get insight into how much talent, time, and sacrifice from everyone on the team went into every aspect of getting Falcon 1 to eventually reach orbit. You gain an appreciation for just how good Elon was at recognizing the right people when he saw them, and how critical that was for the company to eventually become successful…
