How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight

A New York Times bestseller! 

The historic race that reawakened the promise of manned spaceflight

A Finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
 
Alone in a Spartan black cockpit, test pilot Mike Melvill rocketed toward space. He had eighty seconds to exceed the speed of sound and begin the climb to a target no civilian pilot had ever reached. He might not make it back alive. If he did, he would make history as the world’s first com…