This book does a great job taking a lot of information we know about life and considering where we might be able to find it – not only within our solar system, but in the cosmos. Not only that, the author thinks about both life as we know it and life as we don’t know it.
This book effectively picks up where Liftoff left off. Plus, it covers Elon Musk’s, how to put this, mental decline over the last several years. But ultimately what this book does is tells the story of the hard work that a lot of people put in to make a private company successful and the future of human spaceflight a little brighter.
Say what you will about Elon Musk… go ahead, I’ll wait… you get it out of your system? Okay, so putting all that aside, if you ever thought your job was hard, imagine working for a huge nerd with a lofty vision and seemingly endless amounts of money who just wants to get. things. done. That was the early days of SpaceX.
I’m sure for a lot people, they don’t have that “I remember where I was when we saw the first images of Pluto.” But I do. I was at work, watching a live NASA feed as they released the first high resolution images of that most distant planet, er, dwarf planet, Pluto.
Another pick for the Planetary Society book club. And what an amazing pick this was! Who knew that a journey to a lifeless rock somewhere between Mars and Jupiter would be interesting?! This author understood the assignment!
Would you like to go to Mars? I know I would. But would you want to immigrate there? If so, this book is chock-full of information on how to get there, how to live there, how to work there, how to start slavery there, how our world kind of sucks, how America started but isn’t going so well, and how to get around on our neighbor, the Red Planet.
I hope we’re not alone in the universe. When I look up at the stars, I like to imagine that there is life orbiting quite a lot of them. Like in Star Trek. Which is referenced heavily throughout this book. And you know what? I’m here for it!
Another pick of The Planetary Society Book Club – this for April 2024. As the cover states, this book features firsthand astronaut accounts from all 135 missions. It’s loaded with photos too!
We landed on the Moon! Like, today – as I write this! Intuitive Machines, a US-based company, successfully landed the Odysseus lander on the Moon. This is the first private company to land on the Moon and the first US landing on the Moon in over 50 years! That may be why this book is the Planetary Society book club pick for February 2024.
Looking for a book about space, but you don’t have “space” in your schedule to sit down and read a huge friggin’ textbook? Let Neil deGrasse Tyson, this generation’s Carl Sagan, be your guide through the cosmos. Want something even better? Have the author read it right to you! In more of a hurry than even the audiobook can handle? Speed that bad boy up to 2x and listen to this in under 2 hours!
