num_pages: 448
description: A New York Times bestseller! The historic race that reawakened the promise of manned spaceflightA Finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Alone in a Spartan black cockpit test pilot Mike Melvill rocketed toward space. He had eighty seconds to exceed the speed of sound and begin the climb to a target no civilian pilot had ever reached. He might not make it back alive. If he did he would make history as the worlds first commercial astronaut.The spectacle defied reason the result of a competition dreamed up by entrepreneur Peter Diamandis whose vision for a new race to space required small teams to do what only the worlds largest governments had done before.Peter Diamandis was the son of hardworking immigrants who wanted their science prodigy to make the family proud and become a doctor. But from the age of eight when he watched Apollo 11 land on the Moon his singular goal was to get to space. When he realized NASA was winding down manned space flight Diamandis set out on one of the great entrepreneurial adventure stories of our time. If the government wouldnt send him to space he would create a private space flight industry himself. In the 1990s this idea was the stuff of science fiction. Undaunted Diamandis found inspiration in an unlikely the golden age of aviation. He discovered that Charles Lindbergh made his transatlantic flight to win a $25000 prize. The flight made Lindbergh the most famous man on earth and galvanized the airline industry. Why Diamandis thought couldnt the same be done for space flight? The story of the bullet-shaped SpaceShipOne and the other teams in the hunt is an extraordinary tale of making the impossible possible. It is driven by outsized charactersBurt Rutan Richard Branson John Carmack Paul Allenand obsessive pursuits. In the end as Diamandis dreamed the result wasnt just a victory for one team; it was the foundation for a new industry and a new age.
language: English
title: How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight
publisher: Penguin Press