When The Heavens Went On Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach

Product Information

A momentous look at the private companies building a revolutionary new economy in space, from the New York Timesbestselling author of Elon Musk An] exciting account…[Vance] provides finely observed portraits of the figures behind the aerospace companies…The focus on figures outside the limelight offers a fresh look at the new space race, and Vance's feels-like-you're-there storytelling captures the "spectacular madness" of the moonshots. It's The Right Stuff for the silicon age." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

An] exciting account... provides finely observed portraits of the figures behind the aerospace companies...offers a fresh look at the new space race, and Vance's feels-like-you're-there storytelling captures the "spectacular madness" of the moonshots. It's The Right Stuff for the silicon age Publishers Weekly (starred review) A] fantastic new book . . . I can highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in space, especially if you want to know how space startups work behind the public promises and marketing Ars Technica Ever thought about what happens when the fearless innovators of Silicon Valley take a good, hard look at the starlit canvas of space? Well, we're living it right now. A momentous look at the private companies building a revolutionary new economy in space, from the New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk

One of the most exciting tales of our time... It's the next tech frontier, and Vance turns it into a thriller' Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs

Imagine the limitless possibilities of the Internet, but now transpose that to the boundless expanse of space. That's the playground we're talking about. A new Wild West, not of horse-riding outlaws and gold rushes, but of aerospace engineering and visionary startups powered by private money. Space.com: Many companies are now targeting the moon for commercial activity. Can you talk about which of the four companies you featured in your book are going there, and how? Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds. The deployment of Planet’s revolutionary Doves satellites was groundbreaking. No other company in history had ever launched close to 88 satellites simultaneously before. Normally, you'd see one or two – four or five on a good day. Planet had to invent new ways to locate, control, and command their constellation of Doves as they whirled around Earth. It was like conducting an orchestra in zero gravity. This is one of the best books ever written about NewSpace. Ashlee Vance’s new book, When the Heavens Went on Sale, is an incredibly entertaining account of today’s space industry. Vance previously wrote an autobiography about Elon Musk. This time, Vance writes about launching satellites into orbit. Lots and lots of satellites.Vance: I purposely wanted to move away from from the billionaires in space tourism, and missions to Mars, and focus on what I see as the more immediate and real goings-on in space and in low Earth orbit. Planet I see as a great example of the reason why we're going to low Earth orbits and what we can do. Their satellites represent both a lot of the idealism of commercial space and also the action of how going to space can actually do something for life on Earth. Before we look at these companies’ pursuits, let’s first see what they have in common and how these traits have changed the space industry forever. I remember enjoying Ashlee Vance's biography of Elon Musk (although it's hard to like his subject nowadays), so I was eager to read the next volume of his space non-fiction saga. And I was not disappointed. Vance is a gifted storyteller, and once again he focuses not on science or technology but on the people behind it, while simultaneously painting a broad panorama of the current state of play in the field.