Jeff Bezos was five when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and he never forgot his excitement. That, according to the Amazon kingpin, was the inspiration behind Blue Origin, his company developing rockets and advanced space technology. As for the enthusiasm of Bezos’ rival, SpaceX’s Elon Musk, Christian Davenport cites the PayPal founder’s love of adventure. Thus far, Bezos and Musk are the main (but not the only) players in the new space race between entrepreneurs seeking government contracts and the ability to put humans back on the moon—and send them beyond. Davenport’s interview-heavy magazine-style narrative (he’s a staff writer at Bezos’ Washington Post) chronicles the failures, the successes and the thrills associated with Blue Origin and SpaceX’s development of reusable rockets, a technology that makes space flight more efficient and opens the way, perhaps, to achieving the dream shared by Bezos and Musk of colonizing Mars.
