They All Laughed at Christopher Columbus: An Incurable Dreamer Builds the First Civilian Spaceship

by Elizabeth Weil

This is a classic American tale of dreams and obsession--the suspenseful, brilliantly written account of one eccentric man’s hunger to open space travel to us to let us rocket into orbit, return to earth, and soar yet again--thus transforming space travel forever.They All Laughed at Christopher ColumbusGary Hudson was seven years old when Sputnik flew, nineteen when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and all he ever wanted to do was to travel into space. Between 1970 and 1996 he founded and disbanded five separate rocket-building companies, none meeting with much success. Then, in 1997, at the age of forty-seven, he launched Rotary Rocket. His goal was to develop and build the Roton, the world’s first manned, single-stage-to-orbit, fully reusable spaceship, capable of shuttling ordinary people into orbit and back in a single day. Elizabeth Weil followed Gary for two years, and in this book she brings to vivid life a seductively--perhaps delusionally--optimistic world where science and science fiction meld and fuse, and where imagination and invention collide.In California’s bleak and windswept Mojave Desert, Gary assembled a fanatical, mismatched crew of engineers and technicians, and Weil bears witness to their Roton endeavor, from first conception to final test flight. The cast includes a pyromaniacal engineer, a world expert on composite airframes, two former Navy test pilots, Gary’s infinitely patient wife, a third-generation Mojave motel owner, and an enigmatic and resourceful financier. At their center shines Gary himself, a man eternally reflecting the glow of a better, lighter, higher world--a world that, despite his flaws and failures, he perpetually convinces us we’re all about to reach.

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2002

About the author

Elizabeth Weil is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, the writer Daniel Duane, and their two daughters.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 1 out of 5]

A profoundly dishonest book. Weil documented the rise and fall of Rotary Rocket while omitting all the forces that drove that: the "Teledesic winter" of planned communication satellites led by Iridium. Instead of showing the company's fortunes following that of its intended customers she simply portrayed Gary Hudson as operating on whim. The author's ignorance of the technical issues her subjects were focused on didn't help the writing either.

Disclosure: I'm mentioned in it as "a guy from Pioneer."