Book Review: "Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days that launched SpaceX" by Eric Berger (William Collins Publishing Ltd)

 

Voraciously consuming any book I can get my hands on about space exploration comes with its own pitfalls. Sometimes you'll read a fairly dry 'human' account of a specific part of the fascinating and rich history of our human efforts to become a multi-planetary species, but sometimes you'll read a fascinating book that covers not only the technical difficulties and the sheer scale of any project involving going to space, but also fleshes out the characters you know that are directly involved in these projects. 

Take Elon Musk for example, love him or hate him (and I'm still undecided), he has gathered an amazing team under the umbrella of his SpaceX organisation with a set of seemingly impossible goals in mind. 

This book, by Eric Berger - the senior space editor over at Ars Technica doesn't pull any punches in describing the immense challenge that faced Elon Musk and the SpaceX team from their very beginnings in designing and eventually building their first Falcon rockets, to the loftier goals of producing a reusable rocket and transportation system that would once again see cargo, satellites and eventually astronauts reaching low earth orbit using tech launched from US Soil. 

As a family of space nerds we've been following SpaceX religiously, watching every explosion, burn-up, flame-out and spectacular crash (in the case of Musk's "Starship" project, these are often more spectacular and fun to watch (though obviously very expensive for Mr Musk) than the successful launches, but there's something quite dazzling about seeing that gigantic stainless steel ship lurching into the air, and landing on its gear without turning into an orange ball of flame. 

Though the book mostly concentrates on the early attempts at rocket engineering, there's an awful lot of in-depth detail about the folk directly involved, to whom Musk really owes his success. 

You also get the impression that SpaceX's success has come at a colossal financial and human cost to all involved, and at times you also get the distinct feeling that nothing would have been achieved without 'crunch' - a lot of very talented folk almost destroying themselves in order to make launch dates and find out what went wrong when the rockets failed. 

Musk also comes across as a mix of a fun boss to work for, and a blisteringly unforgiving taskmaster - with enough knowledge to be a 'dangerous' boss, and plenty of showmanship to cover over the cracks in the project when they began to emerge. Yet still, with the success of the Falcon 9 and DragonX projects, there must be something that makes folk want to work for him and succeed for him beyond mere monetary gain. 

Reading about the early tests and rocket firings at Kwajalaien and Omelek Island (and trying to imagine what life must have been like for SpaceX folk working and living on a sparse military missile testing facility), through to the later success in setting up shop on Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, the book has you rooting for the SpaceX team throughout, and sharing their pain at the many problems they had to overcome in order to put together those early successful launches. 

 I don't know whether the book purposely makes Musk a bit-part player in this story, but for me that's part of the appeal of this - it plays down the ego trip stuff, and concentrates on relaying the important theme throughout, that this stuff is not easy and success has come with a hefty price tag (almost wiping out Musk's own finances several times). 

The rest, as they say, is history, and we still follow each and every SpaceX mission with renewed interest. It's just great to read such a thorough and engaging piece of work, written by someone who obviously wants to see SpaceX succeed. A riveting read.