Test gods: Virgin Galactic and the making of a modern astronaut
Book 2862/Completed: 9/14/2021
LCCN: | 2020052703 | ISBN: | 9781250229755 (hardcover) | ISBN: | 9781250229748 (ebook) | LC classification: | TL920 | Dewey: | 387.8092/273 | Author: | Schmidle, Nicholas | Published: | New York, NY : Henry Holt and Company, 2021. | Published: | 2021 | Description: | 352 pages | Summary: | Based on exclusive inside reporting, New Yorker writer Nicholas Schmidle tells the remarkable story of the test pilots, engineers, and visionaries behind Virgin Galactic's campaign to build a space tourism company. Schmidle follows a handful of characters-Mark Stucky, Virgin's lead test pilot ; Richard Branson, the eccentric billionaire funding the venture ; Mike Moses, the grounded, unflappable president ; Mike Alsbury, the test pilot who lost his life ; and others-through personal and professional dramas, in pursuit of their collective goal : to make space tourism a reality. Along the way, Schmidle weaves his relationship with his father-a former fighter pilot and decorated war hero-into the tragedies and triumphs that Branson's team encounters out in the Mojave Desert as they design, build, and test-fly their private rocketship. Gripping and novelistic, Test Gods leads us, through human drama, into a previously unseen world-and beyond | Subjects: | Virgin Galactic--Employees. Space vehicles--United States--Testing. Test pilots--United States. Astronauts--United States. Space tourism.
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