NOTES
1. “A SILLY WAY TO DIE”
“We need to get out of here”: This account of the crash is based on interviews with Jeff Bezos, Ty Holland, and Brewster County sheriff Ronny Dodson; news reports, such as Gail Diane Yovanovich, “Chopper Crashes with Amazon.com Exec on Board,” Alpine Avalanche, March 13, 2003; and federal investigative reports, including from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.
Nearly a decade after Bezos: Saul Hansel, “Amazon Cuts Its Loss as Sales Increase,” New York Times, July 23, 2003.
“It turned out to be”: Paul Geneson, “Dynamic Paseno: Charles ‘Cheater’ Bella,” El Paso Plus, September 2, 2009.
The local game warden: Daniel Perez, “Cheater Bella Can’t Escape Stigma of ’88 Jailbreak,” El Paso Times, July 11, 1997.
The morning of the prison break: Joline Gutierrez Krueger, “NM Had Its Own Love-Fueled Prison Break,” Albuquerque Journal, June 17, 2015.
She was obese: Interview with Charles Bella, “Passion and Adventure,” Texas Monthly, March 1990.
“Her boyfriend is slapping me”: Ibid.
“People say that your life”: Alan Deutschman, “Inside the Mind of Jeff Bezos,” Fast Company Magazine, August 1, 2004.
Although he wouldn’t say: Mylene Mangalindan, “Buzz in West Texas Is About Jeff Bezos and His Launch Site,” Wall Street Journal, November 10, 2006.
The mysterious buyer: Ibid.
“I have not been real pushy”: Sandi Doughton, “Amazon CEO Gives Us Peek into Space Plans,” Seattle Times, January 14, 2005.
But then one Monday: John Schwartz, “Add to Your Shopping Cart: A Trip to the Edge of Space,” New York Times, January 18, 2005.
Since its founding in 2000: Brad Stone, “Bezos in Space,” Newsweek, May 5, 2003.
And one industry official: “One Small Step for Space Tourism…,” Economist, December 16, 2004.
Stephenson held a variety: Neal Stephenson, http://www.nealstephenson.com/blue-origin.html.
“It became obvious that”: Steve Connor, “Galaxy Quest,” Independent, August 4, 2003.
“Those guys wanted to sell”: Brad Stone, “Amazon Enters the Space Race,” Wired, July 2003.
2. THE GAMBLE
“Doesn’t anybody play higher”: Much of the discussion about Beal’s trips to Vegas relied on Michael Craig’s The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2006).
“This was not a comfort zone”: http://www.pokerlistings.com/poker-s-greatest-all-time-whales-andy-beal.
“It is remarkable that”: R. Daniel Mauldin, “A Generalization of Fermat’s Last Theorem: The Beal Conjecture and Prize Problem,” Notice of the American Mathematical Society 44, no. 11 (December 1997).
“We’re broke”: http://www.pokerlistings.com/poker-s-greatest-all-time-whales-andy-beal.
“Bluebonnet was like”: Thomas L. Moore and Hugh J. McSpadden, “From Bombs to Rockets at McGregor, Texas,” American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, January 2009.
This was the approach: Craig, The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King, p. 88.
“If everybody else is going broke”: Melinda Rice, “Man with a Mission: The Founder of Beal Bank Is Seriously Rich and Seriously Smart. Now He’s Serious About Shooting for the Stars,” D Magazine, February 2000.
“I don’t lose a lot of sleep”: Ibid.
In early 2000, the company: Beal Aerospace, news release, “Beal Aerospace Test Fires Engine for BA-2 Rocket,” March 6, 2000.
In October 2000, Beal: Andrew Beal, press release, “Beal Aerospace Regrets to Announce That It Is Ceasing All Business Operations Effective October 23, 2000.”
“Our parents had no idea”: Tom Junod, “Elon Musk: Triumph of His Will,” Esquire, November 14, 2012.
“I thought the Internet”: Elon Musk, “The Future of Energy and Transport,” Oxford Martin School, Oxford University, November 14, 2012.
“Well, I don’t think you’ll be coming back”: Elon Musk, “Stanford University Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders” lecture, October 8, 2003.
“The online financial payment system”: Ibid.
Given the size of the rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaW4Ol3_M1o.
“We were both interested”: Junod, “Elon Musk.”
“Because, of course”: Elon Musk, “Mars Pioneer Award” acceptance speech, 15th Annual International Mars Society Convention, August 4, 2012.
“I just did not want Apollo”: Pat Morrison Q & A with Elon Musk, “Space Case,” Los Angeles Times, August 1, 2012.
As a winged spaceplane: Elon Musk, Stanford lecture.
Space was still the exclusive: For more on SpaceX’s early days, see Ashlee Vance, “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” Ecco, May 19, 2015.
On March 14, 2002, Musk founded: Ibid.
At the dawn of the Space Age: Launch data compiled by the consulting firm Bryce Space and Technology.
“I would bet you 1,000-to-one”: Jennifer Reingold, “Hondas in Space,” Fast Company magazine, October 5, 2005.
“The history of launch vehicle”: Jeff Foust, “The Falcon and the Showman,” Space Review, December 8, 2003.
“We’re very proud to debut”: Ibid.
3. “ANKLE BITER”
The young company: Greg Lamm, “Rocket Maker Loses $227M Deal,” Pugent Sound Business Journal, July 4, 2004.
Kistler was hurting: Citizens Against Government Waste press release, “NASA Yanks Sole-Source Contract After GAO Protest,” June 24, 2004.
One top air force official: Much of the lawsuits with Northrop is from Jonathan Karp and Andy Pasztor, “Can Defense Contractors Police Their Rivals Without Conflicts?” Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2004.
“We do everything”: Ibid.
“Northrop wasn’t expecting us”: Ibid.
As a kid in South Africa: Ashlee Vance, “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” Ecco, May 19, 2015, 40.
“I’ve never heard”: Renae Merle, “U.S. Strips Boeing of Launches; $1 Billion Sanction over Data Stolen from Rival,” Washington Post, July 25, 2003.
So, SpaceX filed suit: Space Exploration Technologies Corporation v. The Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation, US District Court, Central District of California, case number CV05-7533, October 19, 2005.
Boeing was just as dismissive: Leslie Wayne, “A Bold Plan to Go Where Men Have Gone Before,” New York Times, February 5, 2006.
The failures were so frequent: Vance, Elon Musk, 124.
“I tell folks”: Sandra Sanchez, “SpaceX: Blasting into the Future—A Waco Today Interview with Elon Musk,” Waco Tribune, December 22, 2011.
Early on, Musk pegged: Megan Geuss, “Elon Musk Tells BBC He Thought Tesla, SpaceX ‘Had a 10% Chance at Success,’” Ars Technica, January 13, 2016.
This was a man who: http://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html.
4. “SOMEWHERE ELSE ENTIRELY”
Eisenhower entered: Official White House Transcript of President Eisenhower’s Press and Radio Conference #123, https://www.eisen hower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/sputnik/10_9_57.pdf.
In a memo to the White House: Memo from C. D. Jackson regarding Soviet satellite, October 8, 1957, https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/sputnik/10_8_57_Memo.pdf.
senator Lyndon Johnson fretted: Matthew Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 173–175.
“In the 1960s you could do”: Charles Piller, “Army of Extreme Thinkers,” Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2003.
As a young employee: Atomic Energy Commission, Meeting No. 410, 10:30 a.m., Thursday, May 18, 1950.
“So the agency was controversial”: Richard J. Barber Associates, Inc., “The Advanced Research Projects Agency: 1958–1974,” December 1975, http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/A
DA154363.
In a message to his colleagues: Department of Energy Archives, minutes of meetings, 1961, https://www.osti.gov/opennet/search-results.jsp?full-text=L.%20Gise%20ALOO&sort-by=RELV&order-by=DESC.
Gise would continue to serve: Mark Leibovich, The New Imperialists: How Five Restless Kids Grew Up to Virtually Rule Your World (Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002), 70.
He paid his son-in-law’s tuition: Brad Stone, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (Boston: Back Bay Books/Little, Brown, 2013), 142.
Jackie got a job: Ibid.
“I’ve never been curious”: Joshua Quittner, “An Eye on the Future: Jeff Bezos Merely Wants Amazon.com to Be the Earth’s Biggest Seller of Everything,” Time, December 27, 1999.
“It really was a seminal moment”: Bezos Expeditions, http://www.bezosexpeditions.com/updates.html.
On the ranch: Joshua Quittner and Chip Bayers, “The Inner Bezos,” Wired Magazine, March 1, 1999.
“We’d hitch up the Airstream”: Jeff Bezos, “We Are What We Choose,” baccalaureate address, Princeton University, May 30, 2010, https://www.princeton.edu/news/2010/05/30/2010-baccalaureate-remarks.
The visits to the library: Academy of Achievement, Washington, DC.
“And from that day forward”: Ibid.
“Will you please get”: Ibid.
The engines were massive: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/history/features/f1_engine.html.
“I think I occasionally worried”: Ibid.
“The whole idea is to preserve”: Sandra Dibble, “Ex-Dropout Leads His Class,” Miami Herald, June 20, 1983.
“He said the future of mankind”: Quittner and Bayers, “The Inner Bezos.”
In 1974, the New York Times: Walter Sullivan, “Proposal for Human Colonies in Space Is Hailed by Scientists as Feasible Now,” New York Times, May 13, 1974, 1.
O’Neill strove to make: Papers of Gerard O’Neill at the Archive at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Dulles, Virginia.
O’Neill would “encourage”: Ibid.
“Did I hear her right?”: From an interview with Kevin Scott Polk. The anecdote is also mentioned in his book Gaiome: Notes on Ecology, Space Travel and Becoming Cosmic Species (Booklocker.com, Inc., 2007).
The set, which the catalog: Russian Space History Sale 6516 Property of the Industries, Cosmonauts, and Engineers of the Russian Space Program, Sotheby’s, December 11, 1993.
It was a relatively low-cost: Douglas Martin, “Space Artifacts of Soviets Soar at $7 Million Auction,” New York Times, December 12, 1993.
Once that was in place: Alan Boyle, “Where Does Jeff Bezos Foresee Putting Space Colonists? Inside O’Neill Cylinders,” Geekwire, October 29, 2016, https://www.geekwire.com/2016/jeff-bezos-space-colonies-oneill/.
He replied that he’d just: Jeffrey Ressner, “10 Questions for Jeff Bezos,” Time, July 24, 2005.
On March 5, 2005: http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/charon-test-vehicle.
5. “SPACESHIPONE, GOVERNMENTZERO”
But unlike other air-launched: Ed Bradley, “The New Space Race,” 60 Minutes, November 7, 2004.
“That was a pretty wild ride”: The account of the SpaceShipOne flights during the Ansari X Prize comes in large part from Black Sky: Winning the X Prize, the 2005 Discovery Channel documentary about the contest.
“He flat didn’t fly”: Eric Adams, “The New Right Stuff,” Popular Science, November 1, 2004.
Upset with what he saw: Andrew Pollack, “A Maverick’s Agenda: Nonstop Global Flight and Tourists in Space,” New York Times, December 9, 2003.
Rutan acknowledged: Adams, “The New Right Stuff.”
“See what you’re up against”: Julian Guthrie, How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight (New York: Penguin, 2016), 339.
“Yeah,” Rutan concurred: Paul Allen, Idea Man (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2011).
Left unsaid: Guthrie, How to Make a Spaceship, 341.
During Binnie’s first: Ibid., 229.
Allen would see the prize!: Ibid., 235.
But suddenly Siebold: Guthrie, How to Make a Spaceship, 360–361.
On the morning of the flight: Andrew Torgan, “Making History with SpaceShipOne: Pilot Brian Binnie Recalls Historic Flight,” Space.com, October 2, 2014.
“If I was this anxious”: Allen, Idea Man, 240.
6. “SCREW IT, LET’S DO IT”
“With no fuel tanks”: The account of the balloon ride is based largely on Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way (New York: Crown Business, 2007), 241.
“The next thing, we found ourselves”: Howell Raines, “2 Trans-Atlantic Balloonists Saved After Jump into Sea off Scotland,” New York Times, July 4, 1987.
Her first flight: Eve Branson, Mum’s the Word: The High-Flying Adventures of Eve Branson (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2013).
And also from Captain: The Penguin Q&A: Richard Branson, https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/in-conversation/the-penguin-q-a/2015/nov/06/sir-richard-branson/.
“I went round”: “Entrepreneurship Rubs Off When Filling Your First Plane,” https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/entrepreneurship-rubs-when-filling-your-first-plane.
He called Boeing: Branson, Losing My Virginity, 191–192.
“We needed to”: Matt White, “1987: First People to Cross Atlantic in Hot Air Balloon,” Guinness Book of World Records, August 18, 2015, http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/60at60/2015/8/1987-first-people-to-cross-the-atlantic-in-a-hot-air-balloon-392904.
Carefully, he fired the burner: Branson, Losing my Virginity, 247.
As he recalled: Michael Specter, “Branson’s Luck,” New Yorker, May 14, 2007.
By 1977, when Branson: Richard Branson, “I Found the Policeman Who Arrested Us for Selling Never Mind the Bollocks,” https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/i-found-the-policeman-who-arrested-us-for-selling-never-mind-the-bollocks.
The first attempt: Branson, Losing My Virginity, 217.
Despite the daunting task: Jill Lawless, “Space-Flight Tickets to Start at $208,000,” Associated Press, September 28, 2004.
“We hope to create”: “Now Virgin to Offer Trips to Space,” CNN, September, 27, 2004, http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/09/27/branson.space/.
“We like to think”: “200 on Pan Am Waiting List Are Aiming for Moon,” New York Times, January 9, 1969.
The list grew quickly: Jeff Gates, “I Was a Card-Carrying Member of the ‘First Moon Flights’ Club,” http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/i-was-card-carrying-member-first-moon-flights-club-180960817/.
“Commercial flights to the moon”: Robert E. Dallos, “Pan Am Has 90,002 Reservations: Public Interest Grows in Flights to the Moon,” Los Angeles Times, February 19, 1985.
Branson’s version of space: Paul Allen, Idea Man (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2011), 243.
7. THE RISK
“The United States is a distillation”: Elon Musk, “Mars Pioneer Award” acceptance speech, 15th Annual International Mars Society Convention, 2012.
As a guidebook pointed out: David Goodman, Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast (Boston: Appalachian Mountain Club Books, 2010).
In modern society: Paul O’Neil, The Epic of Flight, Barnstormers & Speed Kings (New York: Time-Life Books, 1981).
“If we die”: John Barbour, “Footprints on the Moon,” Associated Press, 1969.
Gene Kranz, the flight director: Nova online, interview with Gene Kranz, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tothemoon/kranz.html.
Musk had always had a bit: Kerry A. Dolan, “How to Raise a Billionaire: An Interview with Elon Musk’s Father, Errol Musk,” Forbes, July 12, 2015.
His maternal grandparents: “Tesla and SpaceX: Elon Musk’s Industrial Empire,” Segment Extra, “Elon Musk on His Family History,” 60 Minutes, March 30, 2014.
“There is something particularly”: Fay Goldie,
Lost City of the Kalahari: The Farini Story and Reports on Other Expeditions (Cape Town: A. A. Balkema, 1963).
Their guide slept: Ibid.
“The thing that actually”: Musk, “Mars Pioneer Award” acceptance speech.
James Oberstar, a longtime: “Commercial Space Transportation: Beyond the X Prize,” hearing before the Subcommittee of Aviation of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, US House of Representatives, 109th Congress, February 9, 2005.
8. A FOUR-LEAF CLOVER
“To cast a javelin”: http://www.darpa.mil/about-us/mission.
Over the years: Robert M. Gates and the DARPA media staff, DARPA: 50 Years of Bridging the Gap (Washington, DC: Faircount LLC, 2008).
The launch was supposed to: Leonard David, “SpaceX Private Rocket Shifts to Island Launch,” Space.com, August 12, 2005.
“It’s like you build”: Ibid.
“Commercial enterprises”: NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office, view by Rebecca Wright, January 12, 2013.
NASA wanted to know: NASA Oral History Project, January 15, 2013.
Starting as soon as it received: Ibid.
“A million things”: “SpaceX Aims to Regain Momentum with New Rocket Launch,” CBS News, January 13, 2017.
“If we have three consecutive failures”: David, “SpaceX Private Rocket Shifts to Island Launch.”
Afterward, Musk tried: Tariq Malik, “SpaceX’s Inaugural Falcon 1 Rocket Lost Just After Launch,” Space.com, March 24, 2006.
“I think it could be some”: “NASA Awards Two Contracts to Develop Private Spaceship,” Bloomberg News, August 19, 2006.
“I’m tired of hearing that”: “NASA Picks 2 Firms for Private Spaceship,” Associated Press, August 19, 2006.
“It was new to everybody”: NASA Oral History Project, June 12, 2013.
“Commercial companies”: NASA Oral History Project, March 1, 2013.
“The funding is milestone-based”: Irene Klotz, “U.S. Rocket Firm Puts Malaysian Satellite into Orbit,” Reuters, July 14, 2009.
Looking back on it: Michael Griffin, NASA Oral History Project, January 12, 2013.
The Space Barons Page 32
