The Rocket Company

by Patrick J. G. Stiennon

Seven Billionaires and One Big Problem Big Telescopes, Hot Rodders, and Librarians Gateses, Jobses, and the Laureates' Lemma Build Big, Build Many, or Use it Again Small Market, Small Payload, but not a toy Myths, Mistrust, and Trust The Pitch The Business Plan Mazes, Stop Cords, and Skunk Workers Fuel Tanks, Heat Shields, and Fire Walls Balloon Tanks, Fracture Mechanics, and Friction Stir Welding Enthusiasm Bubbles, Ejections, and Expander Cycles Gasoline, Alcohol, Kerosene, or Liquid Methane Design Reviews, Prototypes, and Parawings Guidance, Navigation, and Control Webb Suit, Hard Suit, Space Suit Markets, Philosophy, Techniques, and Approaches Rockets, Jets, and Soft Landings Pilots, Payloads, and Passengers Mooncars, Monks, and Monasteries Aliens, Cheetahs, and Archea Halfway to Everywhere, First Stage, First Flight Stop the Production Line! Earth Below Us Money, Manufacturing, and Marketing Always Room for Improvement Epilogue I: Space is Finally a PlaceEpilogue II: Mars for the Many.

Genres: Science

263 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2005

Reviews

[Barry Haworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a curious book, and little hard to classify. It doesn't really classify as fiction nor as non fiction, but is instead a highly technical book about how to build a fully reusable two stage to orbit rocket system. The fiction side of it imagines a Rocket Company that sets out to build the rocket in question. What follows is very heavy on the design and technical aspects of the vehicle, the markets it is expected to serve, and (once built) the effect that it has on the space industry and the world in general.

This book is not for everybody, but for a space geek like myself it makes for very informative reading, and gives a perspective on what is unfolding in the space industry at present, and what might happen in the future.

[Alain · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is published by the AIAA the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and in the library where I got it it was shelved as a non-fiction book (629.441 to be exact) yet it is a book of fiction. It is a very bad book of fiction, since it fails to establish characters or present any kind of dramatic situation. When you're a genius level author you can do without characters or drama but unfortunately this is not the case here. All the authors do here is chart the prgress of an imaginary rocket company over the months and the years and the decades to come.

"The Rocket Company" is as dull as the dullest blade you've ever felt. I read it through, little bit by little bit to see where it would go in its mission to "prove" that yes, good old US private enterprise can create a new space age where governments have failed us. I have to say that I enjoyed myself by laughing at the ridiculous arguments that the authors presented, chapter after chapter.

I must say though that the authors see to be full of good intentions. You can see that they put a lot of work in that book. The broblem is that they they didn,t know how to present those ideas they loved so much and they took one of the worst possible paths ever, by making a text based docudrama of the whole thing. The only time I remember seeing such an urge to do good in a book, such a love for an engineering idea coupled with such a miserable failure at communications was in "The Transportation Renaissance: The Personal Rapid Transit Solution" by Edmund W. F. Rydell.

[Jonathan Jeckell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book goes into a fantastic amount of detail on both the technology and the business proposition of starting a space company. I can't believe this is a work of fiction, because the author has thought through an amazing array of technical options using very realistic engineering. Likewise, the book also uses sound business (and particularly startup) logic to show where this company could succeed where others had failed. Even if you don't believe the story, it's a great mental exercise in how design and startup businesses work (i.e. how a new entrant can compete with established, incumbent competitors).

[Philski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting 'straw man' to compare future alt.space companies to. SpaceX obviously took another path: other companies like Blue Origin, XCOR, Masten, Altius, are too young to tell

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

RB: Timothy