Space Cowboys

The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos – Christian Davenport (Public Affairs)

As a child of the space age, I vividly remember sitting with my parents in front of a black and white console TV and watching a Neil Armstrong took that infamous step from the bottom rung of the moon landing craft and touched down on the firmament of the Moon. I have been fascinated ever since and been blessed with the opportunity to interview some of the pioneering spirits of NASA about that time. I equally remember the tragic space shuttle disasters, marking my locations and activities at the time they occurred as “where were you moments” in my lifetime.

I can’t say that the current version of the so-called space race has held that level of fascination for me, striking me as a bunch of overtly rich guys trying to measure their manhood, rather than being space pioneers. So it was with a different kind of interest that I approached Washington Post space and defense reporter Christian Davenport’s The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos.

Davenport does a solid, even handed job of delving not only into the current state private enterprise space race, but what the motivating factors are for the billionaires leading the charge. Davenport sits down with Musk, and Bezos, as well as Paul Allen and Richard Branson. With a more than even chance of ending up coming off as a puff piece, notably with Bezos who owns the newspaper Davenport is employed by but, The Space Barons builds a ground up portrait of the commercial space entrepreneurs and the companies they built to drive new space innovation.

At times there is a sense of guys who are too smart for the room, thinking they can out innovate the stodgy old NASA approach but that gets leavened by some hard lessons they have all learned, often delivered the hard way. Davenport does well with balancing the showmanship of Branson, the smarts of Allen, the worshipful fanboy cult that often surrounds Musk’s every venture and the out and out riches of Bezos. While he didn’t manage to eliminate my skepticism of the new space race, Davenport did manage to convince me it might be worth taking a closer interest in its comings and goings.