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Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut
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55
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
49/100Critics
61/100Scholars
Author:
Nicholas Schmidle
Publisher:
Henry Holt and Co.
Date:
May 4, 2021
Working from 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 charactersâMark 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 killed in a fatal crash; and othersâthrough personal and professional dramas, in pursuit of their collective goal: to make space tourism a reality.
What The Reviewers Say
Nicholas Schmidle’s remarkable account of the commercial space program, Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut, is a book that adeptly jumps between our celestial aspirations and our human, earthbound limitations.
Schmidle reconstructs the decade between Branson’s promise and Alsbury’s accident, in a cinematic style that moves seamlessly in and out of characters’ inner monologues.
The writing [...] is okayish, except when Schmidle aims for some higher effect.
Schmidle is a talented journalist, but his achievement getting behind the scenes at Virgin Galactic, one of Richard Branson’s most sensational and expensive endeavors, is especially impressive.
