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. 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. Vance has had a front-row seat and singular access to this peculiar and unprecedented moment in history. 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. 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.