Book Review: Rocket Dreams

Category: Nonfiction
Reviewed by: Mark Lardas
Title: Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race
Author: Christian Davenport
Format: Hardcover/Kindle/Audiobook
Pages: 384
Publisher: Crown Currency
Date: September 2025
Retail Price: $32.00/$14.99/$20.70
ISBN: ‎ 978-0593594117
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The opening quarter of the 21st Century saw commercial space explode. American commercial launch companies have already exceeded 100 successful launches in 2025. This is greater than the worldwide launch total in 2000.

As the century started, interest focused on three billionaires, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson. All started commercial companies to build and launch manned spacecraft. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk garnered the greatest attention. The battle between two U.S. tech magnates seemed the ultimate business cage match.

Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race, by Christian Davenport, tells the story of the rivalry between the two men. More than that, it tells the story of U.S. space efforts in the 21st Century, especially manned space.

While it examines spaceflight worldwide, including China’s program, this book mainly follows the progress of two companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX. Blue Origin, owned by Bezos, started first. Elon Musk’s SpaceX was launched a few years later. Davenport clearly shows the difference in goals and styles of the two companies.

For Blue Origin and Bezos, the Moon is the goal. It is Bezos’s personal destination. To get there, he hired talent from the space industry. It also embraces a methodical approach. Get everything right, then advance. The company’s motto is Gradatim Ferociter – step-by-step, ferociously. Its mascot is a tortoise.

For Musk, SpaceX was his tool for reaching Mars. Musk intends to move there, live there, and eventually die there. Everything SpaceX does, from its Falcon boosters, Dragon capsule, and Super Heavy-Starship, is a means of achieving that goal. Musk is also aware of the expense involved. He shaped SpaceX into a money-machine to generate the needed capital. Musk is in a hurry. SpaceX’s engineering approach is to get as much right as you can, then go. If failure results, learn from the failure.

Davenport shows both companies are using engineering styles embraced by NASA at different stages of its existence. Bezos embraces the 1990s NASA, an experienced organization. Musk follows that of the 1960s NASA, the new organization willing to blow up rockets to reach its destination.

Davenport also records the results of following each approach. Blue Origin has a successful New Shepard which has put people into suborbital space fourteen times and a struggling New Glenn orbital booster. Musk’s Falcon rocket has reached orbit hundreds of times, and its Dragon capsule has put people into orbit 19 times. SpaceX’s Starship, larger than the Saturn V, is currently undergoing development testing.

Davenport takes readers behind the scenes not just at Blue Origin and SpaceX, but also at other commercial space companies and NASA. He shows how SpaceX went from a little-considered outsider to NASA’s biggest launch provider. He shows how Boeing and Blue Origin fell by the wayside. The reason, as Davenport shows, was company performance, who delivered and who did not.

He also shows how Musk almost sabotages SpaceX several times. Musk apparently taking a hit off a marijuana blunt on the Joe Rogan show alienated the strait-laced NASA Administrator James Bridenstine. Bridenstine almost demanded Musk’s removal from SpaceX.

Readers can tell Davenport is rooting for Bezos. Blue Origin is the home team for Davenport. He is employed by the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos. Yet Davenport remains scrupulously fair throughout the book. He gives Musk due credit for his successes and calls out Bezos for his shortcomings. Readers feel he dislikes having to do so, though.

Davenport deserves credit for that, especially as he buys into the media meme that Musk is flirting with fascism by moving into the Republican (and particularly the Trump) camp. This ignores Mussolini’s formulation of actual fascism: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” Musk is free speech absolutist buying Twitter because Musk felt Twitter was censoring based on political correctness. (It later turned out they were cooperating with the Biden Administration, editing content to favor its policies.) The iconoclastic Musk is always willing to buck the state when it interferes with his libertarian views, whether the state is led by Biden or Trump.

Despite shortcomings, “Rocket Dreams” is a marvelous book. Davenport identifies the key points of the last quarter-century in space. He identifies the factors that lead to success in space and those that stifle progress. It is a wonderful primer in the steps needed to achieve results in a cutting-edge field of technology.

© 2025 Mark Lardas

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