Authors & Insights: "Rocket Dreams" Launch with Christian Davenport

Description

Which country will win the race back to the moon? What will happen when human ambition outpaces regulation? Was President Donald Trump's much-derided creation of the U.S. Space Force a surprising act of foresight? Will the U.S. finally make a real push to the moon and eventually toward Mars?

Award-winning Washington Post reporter and author Christian Davenport will launch his latest book, Rocket Dreams, in the latest Authors & Insights. In conversation with former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, Davenport will explore the high-stakes race to return to the moon and, eventually, Mars—where ambition, innovation, and geopolitics collide.

About Rocket Dreams:

Musk versus Bezos. China versus the United States. The government versus the private sector. Welcome to the rivalries and alliances defining the New Space Age. At stake? Billions of dollars, national prestige, and a place in the history books.

A fleet of powerful new rockets is poised to take humans into the cosmos more than ever before. A lunar land rush has sparked a geopolitical competition among nations. And the world's two richest men have engaged in escalating brinkmanship, as NASA and the U.S. government embraces Silicon Valley innovation to jump-start the nation's ambitions.

Davenport chronicles the mad scramble to shape humanity's off-planet future. He takes readers behind the scenes at NASA and the Pentagon as China's aggressive moon mining plans raise alarms, onto the sprawling Cape Canaveral factory where Blue Origin is working toward Amazon-style lunar deliveries, and onto SpaceX launch pads as Musk's engineers log 100-hour weeks—leaving veteran astronauts marveling that they're now operating "flying iPhones."

About Authors & Insights:

Authors & Insights is a series of in-depth conversations with some of today's most compelling authors and thinkers exploring the issues that matter most in our world today.