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Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX Paperback – 20 March 2021
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- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWilliam Collins
- Publication date20 March 2021
- Dimensions15.3 x 2.3 x 23.4 cm
- ISBN-10000844563X
- ISBN-13978-0008445638
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Product description
Review
‘Berger vividly weaves a tale of technology development at its most heroic …The result is a rousing―and hopeful―saga of hard-won innovation succeeding on an epic scale.’
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY STARRED REVIEW
‘Berger writes with the kind of hard-won insider authority that only comes through covering the nuts and bolts of the commercial space industry for the past twenty years’ FORBES
‘Eric Berger does a fine job of telling the white-knuckle story of how SpaceX was created in 2002 and came close to collapse several times. Although Liftoff recounts the experiences of many of SpaceX’s brilliant engineers, the near-maniacal Musk is almost at the heart of the story.’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Eric Berger's book uses unparalleled access to Musk and all of SpaceX's early staff to place the reader right among them. It is written with verve and polish to keep you turning the pages.’ SPECTATOR
‘The compelling story of how Elon Musk’s relentless quest to get humans to Marks helped SpaceX succeed against the odds makes great reading’NEW SCIENTIST
“This is a book that will hold your rapt attention from start to finish.” ― CHARLES BOLDEN, Former NASA Administrator and Four-Time Astronaut
‘The elegant brilliance of the engineering that allows today’s space rockets to land themselves back on earth – or at sea – right way up, and on target to the inch, is all the doing of the teams assembled by Elon Musk – and the story of how he did it, and how for sure he will get us to Mars whether we like it or not, is told in appropriately stellar fashion by Eric Berger in a book that held me captive, in earth orbit, from prologue to epilogue, countdown to splashdown.’
―SIMON WINCHESTER
About the Author
Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from new space to NASA policy. Eric has an astronomy degree from the University of Texas and a master's in journalism from the University of Missouri. He previously worked at the Houston Chronicle for 17 years, where the paper was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2009 for his coverage of Hurricane Ike.
Product details
- Publisher : William Collins (20 March 2021)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 000844563X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0008445638
- Item Weight : 270 g
- Dimensions : 15.3 x 2.3 x 23.4 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: #78,021 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #603 in Entrepreneurship (Books)
- #1,111 in Engineering & Technology (Books)
- #4,303 in Biographies & Autobiographies (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from new space to NASA policy. Eric has an astronomy degree from the University of Texas and a master's in journalism from the University of Missouri. He previously worked at the Houston Chronicle for 17 years, where the paper was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2009 for his coverage of Hurricane Ike. A certified meteorologist, Eric founded Space City Weather and lives in Houston.
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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.

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.

Buy this book, you won't regret it.

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
