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I read and thoroughly enjoyed Eric Berger's first book outlining how SpaceX got a rocket into space. This follow up book is somehow even more intense and awe inspiring as it chronicles SpaceX's drive to make reusable boosters and rockets and launch bigger and bigger payloads into space.

The shift in thinking that SpaceX's accomplishments represent is really incredible. Starting in 2016, SpaceX matched or exceeded the conventional space industry's record of total launches. Then SpaceX started outstripping the competition. In 2021, the industry giant launched five rockets. In one month alone, SpaceX launched five rockets.

And then factor in reusability. Suddenly the idea of affordable space travel wasn't preposterous.

One SpaceX booster would fly 11 missions. "A single Falcon 9 Booster, therefore, matched the performance of 11 expendable Atlas rockets. 11 Russian rocket engines lay on the bottom of the ocean. But at the surface, nine American engines stood atop a barge ready to fly again."

I wish I understood all the chemistry of rocket science but somehow I still enjoyed reading about liquid oxygen, testing different chemical propellants, and the wild goose chase of trying to diagnose failures that blew up spectacularly on launch pads and in tests along the way.

If you liked Liftoff, there are lots of similarities in both books; the single focus almost manic intensity Elon embodied in his quest to make space travel affordable, and to one day, reach Mars, the work hours and moving goal posts associated with that, and all the politics and hassle associated with navigating government agencies and contracts.

It's also still hard to follow Berger's non-linear chapters, but all in all, he has done it again, a fascinating, personality driven look at what it took to launch this second Space Age.