Escaping Gravity

My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age

By: Lori Garver

Narrated by: Lori Garver

The inside look at how the battle of the space billionaires began and why it matters, Escaping Gravity is former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver’s firsthand account of how a handful of revolutionaries outmaneuvered the system of political patronage and bureaucracy that threatened the space agency. The success of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, and countless other commercial space efforts were preceded by decades of work by a group of people Garver calls “space pirates.”

As the head of the NASA transition team for President-elect Barack Obama and second-in-command of the agency, Garver drove policies and funding that enabled commercial competition just as the capabilities and resources of the private sector began to mature. She was determined to deliver more valuable programs, which required breaking the self-interested cycle controlled by Congress, the aerospace industry, entrenched bureaucrats, and hero-astronauts trying to protect their own profits and mythology.

Garver reveals how—like the military—the space industrial establishment preferred to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on programs aimed to sustain jobs and contracts in key congressional districts over those that were more efficient and could deliver greater progress. Garver details how her quest to transform NASA put her in the crosshairs of these established, powerful interests who viewed her as a threat to the system that has centralized and controlled power since the 1950s.

Including insider NASA conversations and insights on the epic battles that transitioned space access to private resources for a fraction of the cost, Escaping Gravity offers a blueprint for how to drive productive and meaningful government change.

©2022 Lori Garver (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Outstanding Review of the Manned Space Program

I learned a lot about the politics of the US space program, and the difficulties in making progress in the face of entrenched interests.

NASA boldest changes and biggest battles explained

This book is a must read for any fan of NASA, any student of innovation, or any policy junkie curious about how change actually happens in large organizations full of both brilliant people and entrenched interests.

Lori Garver was the pointy end of the spear on a massive transformation in the way the world’s largest civil space agency does business, and has both the accolades and the scars to show for it. In her new biography, Garver shares the compelling story of how she came to believe that the interests of NASA and the United States would be best served by going against the grain of several decades of NASA history and embracing a new and complementary set of ideas and technologies driven by outside innovators who were in equal measure brilliant and brash. From the Oval Office to the launch pad, and inspiring moments of technical triumph to tense stare downs with astronauts and power brokers, Garver takes the reader on a journey that explains so much of what is good and what is bad about NASA today. The book is inspiring in parts, enraging in others, and informative and entertaining the whole way through. I highly recommend the book, both in audio and written formats.

Fascinating and a must read for space enthusiasts

This was a fantastic look under the hood of what it's like working as a civil servant wanting change.

interesting look at the self-licking ice cream con

This book is NOT about NASA and its achievements. It's NOT about technology at all. Lori was one of the folks that headed the transformation of NASA ... trying to break what she has called the "self-licking ice cream cone" that is the interplay between politics (jobs), the military industrial complex (making easy money) and the entrenched NASA bureaucracy dominated by the cup boys (aka ex macho military).

The struggle between entrenched ways and new ideas

Well read by the author and very engaging. The story of her career also covers the changes to how we get to space and her drive to see that happen. We'll worth the time.

interesting and informative

worth listening for any space enthusiast "behind the scenes" stories about NASA long and bumpy ride towards embracing private sector with pay per delivery contracts promising lowering the costs thus sustainability in space exploration

Behind the curtain

Ms. Garver’s book pulled me into the offices and personnel of NASA as I have never encountered. The best and the worst of human behavior comes out in these pages, and it was quite illuminating.

The honest appraisal of her time at NASA includes her own accomplishments, and her own perceived failures, and is a moving portrayal of her time as second in command during a critical time in the history of NASA.

This book will appeal to anyone that likes a good non-fiction book, no space knowledge needed going in. However, for nerds like me who love space, I feel it is eye-opening and inspiring.

Lori Garver is a hero.

Sunlight powers us upward

For current and aspiring leaders in the space field, this is required reading. Whether you agree with Lori or not, you need to grasp this view of the world you hope to lead.

Not only is sunlight a great disinfectant, it is also the source of all our energy. We need it in both uses, and this book taps into both.

Savior of NASA and the US Space Industry

This is the story of how it takes more than a collection of very smart and very wealthy people who want to go to space to change an industry — it takes a selfless believer who navigated the back hallways of a male-dominated and staid bureaucracy to change how to do business in space and unleash the powerful innovative capability of the US’s best and brightest; all the time fighting the entrenched and monied interests of legacy mega-defense contractors and their army of lobbyists. Lori Garver’s story is one of living in the wilderness of “New Space,” climbing the rungs of a ladder as she built it with colleagues, and then entering the lion’s den of old-school NASA and the halls of power in Washington DC, and slowly but surely turning the huge aircraft carrier-like machine to embrace new technology, new business practices, and new companies in the pursuit of solutions that will save our planet and inspire the next ten generations! A must read / listen.

Great story, amateur narration

Garver tells a fascinating story about her role in the (ongoing) dismantling of the corrupt aerospace contracting industry. She comes across as spiteful and defensive at times, but it's understandable given how aggressively she was targeted while at NASA.

The one serious flaw of the book is that she's really not a good narrator. Her tone is patronizing and she stumbles through her delivery fairly often.