Erik Seedhouse book "SpaceX: Making Commercial Spaceflight a Reality"

[yg1968]

The book isn't targeting regulars of this forum. It targets people that have some interest in space but only follow big events (i.e., the vast majority of people).

I haven't bought the book on SpaceX yet. But I bought his book on space tourism a few years ago and I thought that he did a good job summarizing what was going on in the industry.

[Nickolai]

I finished the book a few days ago, and...it's about what we thought. It's basically an extended fan letter to Elon Musk, combined with some technical details you can glean off of this website and others. As far as I can tell there is no original reporting, nor did the author actually interview anyone at SpaceX as far as I can tell.

Is it a horrible book? No. But I'm left wondering who the audience is supposed to be. If it's space enthusiasts...they're going to be disappointed, because the book simply compiles information that has been posted publicly on websites for years now. Yet at the same time I can't imagine a general-interest reader would be very interested in a book like this: the subject matter is too specialized and too technical in nature.

Ultimately the book is not technical enough for technical readers, not in-depth enough for people looking for additional "insider" details on SpaceX itself, and too technical for other readers. Save your money.

Thanks for taking the time to read and review it for us. It's a shame it didn't turn out as we had hoped.

[Nickolai]

Elon supposedly was interviewed by Chris a fair bit, back in the day... was he a user here? did he ever post anything?

Well, someone did register with the name elonmusk:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=profile;u=4917

I'll even save you the trouble of clicking the link:
Date created: 01/31/2007 03:28 AM
Last active: 01/01/1970 12:33 AM [clearly indicating never]

As you might expect, 0 posts