Elon Musk's Desperate Early Days of SpaceX: The Story of Liftoff

Carlos Rangel: Really inspiring book on the origins of SpaceX.

United States on Oct 28, 2023

Pam: This was a gift for my sister who is a BIG follower of the Elon Musk SpaceX Program.
She LOVES it !

United States on Oct 04, 2023

Mepa: In den frühesten Kapiteln von "Liftoff" erkundet Erik Berger die zündende Idee, die den Grundstein für das bahnbrechende Unternehmen SpaceX legte. Wie ein Philosoph des Fortschritts führt Berger den Leser in die Tiefen des Denkens von Elon Musk ein, einem Visionär, der die herkömmlichen Grenzen der Raumfahrt in Frage stellte. Musk's Beharrlichkeit, seine Fähigkeit, Konventionen zu durchbrechen, und sein unerschütterlicher Glaube an die Machbarkeit des Unmöglichen sind wie Farbtöne in Bergers stilistischer Leinwand.

Durch die präzise Verwendung rhetorischer Techniken verleiht Berger der Entstehung der Falcon 1 eine beinahe mythologische Dimension. Er beschreibt die Spannung und die Rückschläge dieses Unterfangens als eine Art epischen Kampf zwischen Mensch und Maschine, bei dem die Grenzen des menschlichen Potenzials immer weiter hinausgeschoben werden. Bergers Worte entfachen ein inneres Feuer des Entdeckungsgeistes und der Entschlossenheit, das den Leser in den Schmelztiegel des Ingenieurwesens eintauchen lässt.

Das Erzählen der historischen Anekdote von SpaceX wird zur Pilgerreise des Wissens, bei der Berger den Leser dazu ermutigt, sich in die...

Germany on Aug 08, 2023

DaveCary: Every Elon detractor should read this book. Especially those who think he was a privileged rich kid, who got even richer off of government money as if it were easy and anyone could do it. He hired awesome people and led them to willingly dedicate their lives to the cause of completely disrupting an antiquated, wasteful, good old boy industry. He very nearly became financially bankrupt in the process, it was anything but easy which becomes abundantly clear in the book. There is no doubt Elon musk is one of the hardest working, greatest innovators of our time and this book outlines just why he is that person.

United States on Aug 04, 2023

maui nut: Cracking good read!

Liftoff by Eric Berger is the authorized chronology of SpaceX from inception in 2002 with the Falcon 1, a single engine rocket to the 27 engine Falcon Heavy.
The story highlights:
A visionary entrepreneur that is both chief engineer and CFO that dreams of a reliable, reusable and affordable space delivery vehicle.
Assemblage of a team of engineers that pour their hearts and souls into what is seemingly the impossible (ultimately landing a booster stage on a floating barge 200 miles down range).
Private sector pure capitalism competing with government sponsored behemoths. The risks, speed and willingness to fail catapult commercial space launches and dramatically reduce the cost per pound to reach orbit.
The sacrifices team members made gladly to be a part of making history. To a man/woman they were happy to make the trade and consider their time at SpaceX to the experience of their lives. (many did burnout).

HIGHLY recommended, hard to put down, chillingly good story.

United States on Apr 14, 2023

A Reader: This is an excellent account of the two decades long struggle to bring the cost of space travel down!

India on Apr 05, 2022

Jack Hicks: LIFTOFF, Elon Musk and the Desperate early days that launched SPACEX
Eric Berger, 2021
The creation and subsequent success of the company SPACEX is one of the most improbable and stunning business success stories of modern times. Elon Musk started the company in 2003 with 100 million dollars of his own money, a couple dozen engineers and a rented warehouse in Hawthorne, Ca and within 18 years turned it into the preeminent worldwide leader in space launch services with over 2/3’s of the global market. This industry was dominated for decades by huge legacy aerospace companies such as Boeing and Lockheed. The history of start-up firms that challenged this status quo is a history of a graveyard of failures. How did Elon Musk achieve this remarkable success? That is the subject of this page-turning technological thriller by Eric Berger who put this narrative together with the input of all the original engineers and employees including Musk himself.
I, myself, spent the first five years of my employment after engineering school, working in this exact same industry so I have increasingly been intrigued by what SpaceX achieved. My experience allows me certain insight, although...

United States on Dec 21, 2021

Gimmi: Ottimo libro, ben scritto, con uno stile chiaro e avvincente, da romanzo Scifi. Personalmente uno dei migliori libri che ho letto quest'anno.
Seguo Erik da anni sul suo blog e Twitter, ma nn era scontato che riuscisse nel scrivere bene un libro.
Meno incentrato alla sola figura di Elon Musk (che ammiro, ma le cui geste sono fin troppo inflazionate), narra i primi anni di vita del progetto SpaceX, visto dal punto di vista intimo dei primi dipendenti (in molti casi ormai usciti dall'azienda).
Arrivati alla fine, si spera che un domani ci sia la possibilista di avere un secondo libro (magari sulle gesta di Starship e lo sviluppo di Staralink!!)

Italy on Oct 08, 2021

Clyve Westerlund: Why? I don’t even know where to begin. Because I am shook with awe and excitement and sympathy and empathy of the things that have transpired on multiple fronts since the dawn of the SpaceX founding. This story explores the incredible timeline and effort and resources and sacrifices and terrifying ordeals and emotions that so many remarkable individuals had made and given to make the ever-old dream of reaching the Heavens.

What SpaceX has achieved for Humanity! Is nothing short of incredible incredible incredible. That is the most simplified statement I can make to summarise the entirety of what has been achieved thus far.

I am glad that there is a most accessible story of what it took to make the strides that; in my opinion, is akin to landing humanity on the moon. What you ‘must’ understand in all levels of this, is that rocket science is bloody hard. And founding and sustaining a space company is even more hard. From the get go SpaceX and its team have faced obstacle after obstacle with overwhelming forces that, by all odds, made the any success a near impossibility. Yet the team described in this story proved that with great focus and an unencumbered...

Australia on Jul 18, 2021

A. Mcalinden: In the summer of 2019, I relived the moon landing through two great pieces of audiovisual media. The BBC World Service podcast "13 Minutes To The Moon", a deep dive into the entire Apollo programme, and the same story told visually in Todd Douglas Miller's astonishing "Apollo 11", which I would urge you to see on as big a screen as possible.

They both reawakened a long dormant interest in space for me. I read a lot of tech news, so had vague awareness of the big milestones of SpaceX, but can't claim to have followed them.

So from that point on, I immersed myself in both the spaceflight history of a half century or more ago, and the spaceflight present; where once or twice a month - sometimes once or twice a *week*, SpaceX put a payload in orbit then bring back the first stage of the rocket that did it. Kennedy may have said, "we do these things not because they were easy, but because they are hard"; yet SpaceX have made launches seem as routine as a supermarket shop.

Eric Berger's book shows you, starting from zero, how they got there - through teamwork and the efforts of many individuals, many of whose stories we hear in detail as the narrative thrums along....

United Kingdom on Mar 14, 2021