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.
Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age
Author: Eric Berger
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover
Published: September 24, 2024
Publisher: BenBella Books
View on Goodreads
Date Completed: December 20, 2024
My rating: 
Thoughts
I’m going to start off with something I complained about in Liftoff and that’s the non-linear storytelling the author uses here. Now, he addresses it somewhat at the end of this book – the difficulty of telling so many converging stories with one greater overarching theme. I still prefer non-fiction to be as linear as possible, but I will table that complaint here.
This is only Eric Berger’s second book, but he has solidified himself as THE person to report on and write about SpaceX. He does an amazing job balancing telling the story of numerous people not named Elon Musk who had the tenacity and hard-work ethic to make human spaceflight and space exploration more affordable. He doesn’t mince words when it comes to writing about failures during the process of making reusable rockets. And SpaceX certainly is no stranger to failure. In fact, as Berger pointed out in this book and its predecessor, SpaceX was built upon the ideology that failure leads to success. The main reason SpaceX has been able to succeed where it has is that it hasn’t shied away from failure. Now, Berger also does a good job of getting across that SpaceX is most certainly not cavalier with human lives. Let’s be clear about that.
Again Berger pulled no punches when talking about Musk. He gives praise where praise is due to be sure. Without Musk, there would be no SpaceX, no Falcon rockets, and quite possibly no US transportation to the International Space Station. Boeing is failing all the time and Blue Origin just does seem to have the drive that SpaceX has. And that SpaceX drive is due to the culture that Musk cultivated when the company started.
But, and this may come as a shock to you (it won’t), Musk can be quite divisive. To put it about as diplomatically as possible. Berger touches in the book on how Musk single-handedly ruined Twitter when he acquired the company. Well, maybe not single-handedly. That platform is a toilet bowl if I’ve ever seen one. And Berger also talks about Musk’s switcheroos in political positions. Somehow ($$$) he convinced Trump to take him under his wing and essentially create a position for Musk. A lot of people think this is a conflict of interest given Musk’s ownership of SpaceX. But currently SpaceX is the US’s only real option for launching satellites, supplies, and people into space. Being able to whisper in the President’s ear to move along space policy isn’t really going to help SpaceX any more than the mere fact that there just isn’t competition at this point for SpaceX. The biggest issue with Musk, like the President he buddies around with, is his mouth.
That’s enough politics for this review. And with that, I gave this book 4.5 out of 5 stars. I’m eager to see how SpaceX continues to push the envelope and get the US into space over the next few years. As soon as Berger writes a new book about it, I’ll be here to read it!
