![]() ![]() Does it take longer than Elon expects and give Rocket Lab time to a bigger rocket? Does that give it time to catch up to the Falcon 9? Does Rocket Lab become sort of this, whatever you want to call it, the IBM to SpaceX’s Apple, where you have these two competitors? I think something like that could happen. So you’ve got one company that’s done hundreds of launches, another that’s done dozens, and then very quickly you drop off to one or two, and most of those rockets are being rebuilt and refashioned. If you’re talking about getting satellites to space, it’s like SpaceX and Rocket Lab. “SpaceX does look just incredibly dominant at this moment. So, back to the first question: Can anyone keep up with SpaceX? Based on the current state of the commercial space industry, Vance sees one potential rival, and it’s not Blue Origin or United Launch Alliance: If SpaceX’s super-heavy-lift Starship launch system lives up to its promise, that will give Musk an even bigger lead. “I mean, SpaceX is almost like the most stable thing in his life - which you usually cannot say for rocket companies.” What about the SpaceX Elon? “In some ways, the Space Elon is the easiest Elon to understand, which is surprising in some sense,” Vance says. “Like anyone, he’s a nuanced person, in person. ![]() “People seem to either love him or hate him, and I think it’s a bit silly if you actually know him and spend time with him,” he says. Vance acknowledges that Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter, and all the twists and turns that led to, have had a polarizing effect. He just called me out of the blue one day while I was in New Zealand reporting on Rocket Lab. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I write about it in the book. “And then I think, as they say, time heals all wounds. “He didn’t talk to me for a long time,” Vance says. “Things are only going to get more chaotic, I think, as time goes on.” “You had one of the three main traditional space superpowers, in Russia, get totally flipped on its head by commercial space,” Vance says. ![]() SpaceX’s Starlink constellation provided vital communications links, while satellite imagery from Planet Labs and other companies added to the assets available to Ukrainian intelligence analysts. “A lot of this very clearly came to a head in Ukraine in the war, where I would suggest that’s the first space war, or the inkling of a space war, that we’ve seen.” “We have all kinds of stuff between Russia and China and the U.S., with satellites that can spit out baby satellites that can go grab other satellites, and people try to shoot down satellites just to show that they can and create all this debris,” Vance says. Today Vance sees the war in Ukraine as a turning point, not only for Polyakov’s fortunes, but also for space security. “Any hopes for a revival of the Ukrainian aerospace industry were in the process of being obliterated, along with much of the country,” Vance writes in the book. Last year, the war in Ukraine brought an end to that effort. Vance actually traveled to Ukraine in 2018 to see the decrepit Soviet rocket factory that Firefly tried to revive. I did not know how weird they would get.” When I set out to do this, I knew things would get weird. I knew I wanted to see what would happen. “And so the story was really what happens when you put this ‘bull in a China shop’ in the aerospace industry. “He’s an OBGYN turned software millionaire, turned rocket magnate, and is just this … one-of-a-kind, force of nature,” Vance says. The author was given exclusive access to the behind-the-scenes turmoil (and tedium) surrounding the rise of Astra, which started out with the name “Stealth Space Company” and saw one of its rockets literally go sideways on Alaska’s Kodiak Island.Īnd then there’s Max Polyakov, the Ukrainian-born investor who poured more than $100 million into Firefly Aerospace - only to be forced by the federal government to sell off his interest due to worries that he might be a Russian asset. Vance recounts how Planet Labs was started up by a “space hippie crew” with the guidance of Pete Worden - a former Air Force general who stirred up so much controversy during his time as the director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley that he was accused of being part of a conspiracy to destroy America’s space program. Now he’s the CEO of a billion-dollar company that just launched a weather-monitoring satellite mission for NASA. Every story has its quirks: Beck, for example, got into rocketry as a hobbyist and first made his mark with a rocket bike that looked as if it came straight out of Evel Knievel’s garage. In the book, Vance tells the stories behind the creation of those space startups and their interconnections. “When the Heavens Went On Sale” by Ashlee Vance (Ecco HarperCollins) ![]()
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