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

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

  • Downloads:2131
  • Type:Epub+TxT+PDF+Mobi
  • Create Date:2022-11-07 16:21:34
  • Update Date:2025-09-06
  • Status:finish
  • Author:Ashlee Vance
  • ISBN:B0B9SLZX9M
  • Environment:PC/Android/iPhone/iPad/Kindle

Summary

A momentous look at the private companies driving a revolutionary new economy in space, from the New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk

With the launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2008, Elon Musk's SpaceX became the first private company to build a low-cost rocket that could reach orbit。 And that milestone carried major implications: Silicon Valley, not NASA or nation states, was suddenly cemented as the epicenter of the new Space Age。 Start-ups and the wealthy investors behind them began to realize that the universe--ungoverned and infinite--was open for business。 Welcome to the Wild West of aerospace engineering。

When the Heavens Went on Sale tells the remarkable, unfolding story of this frenzied intergalactic land grab。 Through his trademark immersive reporting, Ashlee Vance follows four pioneering companies--Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs, and Rocket Lab--as they build new space systems and attempt to launch rockets and satellites into orbit by the thousands。 While the public fixated on the space tourism being driven by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson, these new companies arrived with a different set of goals: to make rocket and satellite launches fast and cheap, thereby opening Earth's lower orbit for business--and setting it up as the next playing field for humankind's technological evolution, where we can connect, analyze, and monitor everything on Earth。

Vance has had a front-row seat and singular access to this peculiar and unprecedented moment in history。 When the Heavens Went on Sale travels through private company headquarters, labs, and top-secret launch locations around the world, including California, Texas, Alaska, New Zealand, Ukraine, India, and French Guiana。 He chronicles it all in full color: the private jets, communes, gun-toting bodyguards, drugs, espionage investigations, and multimillionaires guzzling booze to dull the pain as their fortunes disappear。

With the most detailed and intimate reporting of Vance's career, When the Heavens Went on Sale reveals the spectacular chaos of the new business of space, and what happens when the idealistic, ambitious minds of Silicon Valley turn their unbridled vision toward the limitless expanse of the stars。 This is the most pressing and controversial technology story of our time, a tale of fascinating characters chasing unimaginable stakes as they race to space。

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Reviews

Trish Honch

Greetings and hello!I am an interstellar talent scout of the Castor MovingGroup Network。 You may call me Glorbalorbl。 Myhome is in the Zubenelgenubi system, a multi-starneighborhood which lies conveniently close to yourhome system's ecliptic plane。 As a result of thisgeometric convenience, us Zubenelgenubians havelong been capable of analyzing your home planetusing techniques like the TTV method familiar toyou, and we are even fully capable of directspectroscopic analysis of your atmosphere, but Greetings and hello!I am an interstellar talent scout of the Castor MovingGroup Network。 You may call me Glorbalorbl。 Myhome is in the Zubenelgenubi system, a multi-starneighborhood which lies conveniently close to yourhome system's ecliptic plane。 As a result of thisgeometric convenience, us Zubenelgenubians havelong been capable of analyzing your home planetusing techniques like the TTV method familiar toyou, and we are even fully capable of directspectroscopic analysis of your atmosphere, but evenif we were limited to your primitive methods, orlimited to one star system, we would still haveknown about your biosphere since long before yourparticular species showed up on the scene, becausewe are a much older civilization that has migratedinto the area from elsewhere in the galaxy。We have occasionally glanced your way in curiositysince before the first campfires began dotting thedark side of your planet。 Upon observing yourbehaviors as you developed your unique identityamong the lifeforms of your world, we quickly knewthat you showed a lot of promise, but alsopossessed many problematic qualities。 As for thesetroublesome characteristics, you seemed apparentlyunable or unwilling to recognize and remedy them inas timely of a manner as we have come to expectfrom most species that we consider to be developingtoward true intelligence。We have long wanted to give you the benefit of thedoubt, noting that your home planet is as dynamicas it is beautiful。 The challenges faced by theevolution of life on your world presented you withmany harsh realities and many long threads ofintergenerational trauma。 We get it, you grew up in atough neighborhood。 You did not have the benefit ofgrowing up slowly on a fully-stable paradise planetorbiting neatly in a flare-free band of space around afully-convective star with an extremely long main-sequence lifespan, like my species originally did。。。 or,in fact, like most of the intelligent species in thegalaxy did。Nonetheless, it was frustrating enough watching theconstant setbacks that resulted from yourstubbornly persistent myopia that we decided tostop paying much attention to what was going onover here。 The last time anyone in our network took aserious peek must have been a few hundred Earthorbits ago。 Upon reflection, I must say this appearsto have been a significant oversight on our behalf,as you have experienced a surprising amount ofchange in that time interval。During a normal shift break on a routine researchmission through the local void, my colleagues and Iwere recreationally surfing the plasma veil on theedge of your Sun's magnetic field when wehappened upon a small craft of yours containingsome cute cartoons and a record that appears to betitled "THE SOUNDS OF EARTH THE UNITED STATESOF AMERICA PLANET EARTH" - as lovers of musicand recording arts ourselves, we immediately threwthat shit onto the decks and put the needle down。While the sound was a little bit primitive and mostlycontained what seemed to our sensibilities like under-produced source material captured from a singlelinear timeline, we had to admit it had some prettygood tracks on it。 Even Greglorbalor the Horrible wasdelightedly clapping his digits at times。As the resident talent scout on our mission, it wasincumbent upon me to reach out to you。 Our teamquickly analyzed the current state of your commonlanguages and colloquialisms, as well as the stateof your science。 Using that information I was able towrite you this message, and even select a fewanthems of my alien nation to share with you, whichI hope you will enjoy。 My home system, after all, isrenowned for pumping out the phattest beats in theOrion Arm。Now, to get more serious。 Some of the things I saymay feel to you like harsh criticisms, but I want youto keep in mind that if I didn't see potential in you, Iwould not bother to send you this message。 Withthat in mind, there are some things I would like youto consider。 In order to apply for galactic citizenshipand be liberated from your current state ofquarantined containment, you are going to need tomeet the following requirements:1) You must cease your habitual engagement inavoidable conflict。 This includes conflict within yourown species as well as conflict between yourcivilization and its environment。 Amongst nearly allenlightened interstellar civilizations, this is theprimary measure by which the relative intelligence ofa life form is established。 Any civilization with atendency toward violence, duplicity, sabotage, and ill-will is simply not considered mature enough topopulate beyond their native star system。 As long asyou avoid making the breathtakingly obviousdecision to work in harmony with the world you are apart of, then I must woefully inform you that you andyour music will not be welcome at any of our publicparks, or on any of our relativistic highways, or inany of our universally-acclaimed utopian garden-metropolis sanctuaries, or at any of our GalacticMusic Awards ceremonies。2) You must eliminate poverty。 Mismanagement ofresources is generally considered a bad sign whenanalyzing the inhabitants of any world。 By ourstandards, as long as any one member of yourcivilization is involuntarily unable to meet their basicneeds, including access to food, shelter, information,and care, the title of "intelligent" will continue toelude your species。3) You must transmit a new collection of your bestmusic in the direction of my home system, the starsystem you know as Alpha Librae, from between thelongitude you call 100°W and 110°W, at the time youcall 12:08 AM, on the date you call June 21, 2038。 Irepeat: new mixtape, right ascension 14h 52m 07。6s,declination 16°08'06。0", at the moment of thesolstice closest to your aphelion, sixteen orbits fromthe time of this message, and from the part of yourplanet facing most directly away from your Sun atthe time。 This isn't an intelligence test like the othertwo items I have listed, I simply want a more up-to-date demo from you。 We will have areceiver/transmitter in position to then distributeyour message rapidly to the Zubenelgenubi systemand, from there, to my colleagues in the CastorMoving Group Network。To put it lightly, a good demo is a great first steptoward building your rapport with the rest of us, andwould make your application for galactic citizenshipmuch more likely to be approved。 If your demo isgood, and you've met the other two requirements Imentioned, then we might be able to finally inviteyou to the party。 If your application is indeedapproved, you will then have access to the collectiveknowledge of the various networks tangling theirway around the Milky Way。 That includes anabundance of helpful information about travel,communication, computation, longevity, andspacetime itself, to name a few points of interest。Good luck, Earth People。Kindest regards,Glorbalorblorlbrrgkjegrlkust6;l9[-t67/0 。。。more