WHEN THE HEAVENS WENT ON SALE, now on sale

Ashlee Vance’s new book on the new space companies goes on sale tomorrow. It has the inside track of the space entrepreneurs we know, as Ashlee was embedded with these companies from their formative years: Planet, RocketLab, Astra and Firefly. What inspired them?

SpaceX’s “Falcon 1 set the action that takes place in this book in motion — and quite likely changed the course of human history. The imaginations and passions of engineers and dreamers all around the world expanded.” (p.11.)

And a fun recounting of the NASA PhoneSat origins of Planet:

“One of Silicon Valley’s best-known amateur rocket enthusiasts is the venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson. Jurvetson had been testing his own rockets when he caught wind of what the NASA Ames engineers were up to. Jurvetson had been one of the earliest investors in SpaceX, and quickly began to see the PhoneSat effort as perhaps the start of the next major shift in commercial space. He befriended Marshall and Boshuizen on the spot and began following their work with his checkbook at the ready.” (91)

“The Planet founders had been paying for their experiments out of their pocket but now needed to raise money as their expenses mounted. Remembering their time in the Black Rock Desert, Marshall and Boshuizen decided to call the venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson. To their great surprise and joy, he agreed to cut Planet its first check. ‘We raised three million dollars at the start,” Marshall said. “To his credit, he saw it and he placed the bet.” (102)

‘’’Jurvetson says that he likes to fund people that don’t have making a ton of money as their main ambition,’ Marshall told me. ‘If money is your main ambition, you tend to think more near term. If you have a longer-term goal like settling Mars like Elon or saving Earth, like us, you are going to make much bigger leaps to change things dramatically.” (104)