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Journalism of Courage
Take two high-profile billionaires, give them a vast new potential ‘market’ to conquer, and you are assured of having the mother of all business battles. That is exactly what is happening in outer space, where Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are squaring off against each other, watched with interest by NASA, the Chinese and others. It is this race for space that Christian Davenport covers in his latest bestseller, Rocket Dreams.
Davenport is perhaps the ideal person to write the book. He has been covering NASA and the space industry for the Washington Post for quite a while now, and has been writing extensively about the Musk-Bezos rivalry in space. Rocket Dreams is his second book on the subject, the first being The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos, which was published in 2018. He might be a part of the Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos, but Davenport is very balanced in his appraisal of both billionaires and their attempts to make their next trillion from territory beyond the planet they (currently) live on.
The book covers about 25 years of developments in space involving Bezos and Musk, beginning with Bezos founding Blue Operations in 2000 (it later became Blue Origin) and ending impressively recently with Blue Origins New Glenn rocket in January, 2025. It is one incredible Odyssey along the space highway by two very different pilots, and Davenport’s ability to narrate it like a thriller writer makes the book a very engrossing read. We felt a little overwhelmed by some of the tech and science details in places, but still raced through the 380-odd pages, mainly because we wanted to know what Musk and/or Bezos did next.
Like Space Barons, Rocket Dreams too is mostly about the Musk vs Bezos face-off and captures the two very different approaches and outlooks the two persons have towards space, as they battle for NASA contracts and to lead the agency’s Project Artemis, which aims to put humans back on the moon and eventually on Mars. Whereas Musk’s approach is almost frenetic as he pushes SpaceX, often making engineers work long hours, Bezos’ manner is more steady and Amazon-like, seemingly focusing on the long term, so much so that Blue Origin’s mascot is the tortoise. Bezos explains:
“Our mascot is the tortoise. We paint one on our vehicles after each successful flight. Our motto is Gradatim Ferociter – step by step, ferociously. We believe slow is smooth and smooth is fast. In the long run, deliberate and methodical wins the day, and you do things quickest by never skipping steps.”
While that might sound good on paper, it does seem that Musk’s methods seem to have yielded greater dividends, although he almost got SpaceX in trouble by smoking marijuana on a Josh Rogan podcast – something that “flipped out” Jim Bridestine, the slightly conservative administrator of NASA. While neither man is a fan of the other, Musk seems to revel in baiting and criticising Bezos. “There is perhaps no one Elon Musk likes taunting more than Jezz Bezos,” Davenport writes. “Over the years, he’s unleashed a string of insults that have run the gamut from juvenile to vulgar to nerdy.”
That said, Musk’s respect for Bezos is evident as he tells the author towards the end of the book, “Jeff Bezos is an extremely competent, smart human being. And the more time he applies to Blue Origin, the better the company will be.” Bezos, incidentally, is notorious for spending only two afternoons in a week (Tuesday and Wednesday) at Blue Origin, even though he called the company his life’s most important work.
While undoubtedly intelligent and visionary in their different ways, neither Bezos nor Musk emerge as knights in shining armour in the book. The two leaders come across as abrasive and pushy at times. In fact, the book opens with Bezos being furious: “Jeff Bezos was fuming – so angry his eyes bulged.” The Amazon founder is annoyed because of a pitch document Blue Origin designed for NASA. “I get this angry twice in a year, and it’s always because of the decisions Blue Origin makes,” he says. These are not easy people to work for. Or with, for that matter.
While Rocket Dreams is mainly about Bezos and Musk battling for space of the outer kind, it also highlights how NASA increasingly opened its doors to private players as it attempts to counter what it sees as the Chinese threat in space. Newt Gingrich in fact, advises the Trump administration to play Blue Origin and SpaceX against each other. “The entire world will watch in awe as American billionaires race back to the Moon in partnership with NASA, in a race created by President Trump,” he wrote in a memo that took the Musk-Bezos space battle to another level. Lurking in the background of this rivalry and throughout the book is the US vs China rivalry, in which the US is relying heavily on Musk and/or Bezos to come out a winner. The door is left open on that till the very end.
Fast-paced drama laced with tense rocket and spaceship launches (many of which fail), politics, lobbying, frayed tempers, personal insults (“I am sorry, did I take my stupid pills today?”, “Are you lazy or just incompetent?”, etc), stackfuls of innovation, and crazy leadership skills, …Rocket Dreams has them all, garnished with conversations (many surprisingly candid) tween different people, making it a riveting read for space and business followers alike.
Read Rocket Dreams and the next time you see the sky, you will not see the stars, the sun or the moon, but a battlefield for billionaires. Whether that is a good or a bad thing, is another story altogether.
Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos and the Trillion-Dollar Space Race
By Christian Davenport
384 pp
Blink Publishing
Rs 699
