Rocket Dreams

Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race

De: Christian Davenport

Narrado por: Dan Bittner

Musk versus Bezos.

China versus the United States.

The government versus the private sector.

Welcome to the rivalries and alliances defining the New Space Age.

At stake? Billions of dollars, national prestige, and a place in the history books.

Moon landings and space walks once captivated the public’s attention. But, in recent decades, the U.S. space enterprise has felt moribund. Now, that’s finally about to change.

A fleet of powerful new rockets is poised to take humans into the cosmos more than ever before. A lunar land rush has sparked a geopolitical competition among nations. And the world’s two richest men have engaged in escalating brinkmanship, as NASA and the U.S. government embraces Silicon Valley innovation to jump-start the nation’s ambitions.

Space has entered a golden age, and this is just the beginning. In this gripping work, award-winning Washington Post writer Christian Davenport chronicles the mad scramble to shape humanity’s off-planet future. He takes listeners behind the scenes at NASA and the Pentagon as China’s aggressive moon mining plans raise alarms, onto the sprawling Cape Canaveral factory where Blue Origin is working toward Amazon-style lunar deliveries, and onto SpaceX launch pads as Musk’s engineers log 100-hour weeks—leaving veteran astronauts marveling that they’re now operating “flying iPhones.”

What will happen as human ambition outpaces governmental regulation? Which country will win the race back to the moon? Was Donald Trump’s much-derided creation of the Space Force a surprising act of foresight, and will the U.S. finally make a real push to the moon and eventually toward Mars?

Masterfully paced, rigorously reported, and vividly told, Rocket Dreams offers a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of the grit-fueled global battle to push humankind further into the cosmos—revealing that the science fiction dreams of the last century may soon become our reality.

©2025 Christian Davenport (P)2025 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“This is a thrilling account, filled with remarkable reporting and great inside color, of the race between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to create commercial rockets. It’s an important tale of how American ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit are creating a new type of space age.”—Walter Isaacson

“[Davenport] deftly blends nuanced portraits of his principals with accessible explanations of the relevant technology and fascinating space lore. Timely, thorough reporting on the companies vying for supremacy in the final frontier.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A gripping, up close window into the past several years of fierce competition and achievement in space, Rocket Dreams also manages to bring out the human stories at its heart. Davenport—one of the world’s foremost space journalists—takes the reader inside the conversations where many of the most important decisions in today’s space sector were made. A remarkable achievement; I couldn’t put it down.”—Matthew Weinzierl, Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA Program at Harvard Business School