Realizing Tomorrow

Book excerpt: U.S.A.F. Chief of Staff 2013 Professional Reading List Selection Nearly forty years passed between the Apollo moon landings, the grandest accomplishment of a government-run space program, and the Ansari X PRIZE-winning flights of SpaceShipOne, the greatest achievement of a private space program. Now, as we hover on the threshold of commercial spaceflight, authors Chris Dubbs and Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom look back at how we got to this point. Their book traces the lives of the individuals who shared the dream that private individuals and private enterprise belong in space. Realizing Tomorrow provides a behind-the-scenes look at the visionaries, the crackpots, the financial schemes, the legal wrangling, the turf battles, and--underpinning the entire drama--the overwhelming desire of ordinary people to visit outer space. A compelling story of the pioneers of commercial spaceflight--and their efforts to open the final frontier to everyone--this book traces the path to private spaceflight even as it offers an instructive, entertaining, and cautionary note about its future.