THEY ALL LAUGHED AT CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

With this book (her first), Elizabeth Weil seems to be trying to cure him — or anyone who dreams of building a ship that can provide truly routine access to space — of that dream. She regards the dream of spaceflight as a fantasy symptomatic of protracted male adolescence, an unhealthy distraction from the normal pursuits of life. It is unproductive and dangerous because it has for most of human history been unattainable; it is even more pernicious now that NASA has, with the Apollo missions, attained it.

The "incurable dreamer" is Gary Hudson, CEO of Rotary Rocket Company. Ms. Weil researched her book by living and working alongside him and the Rotary team for three years. She had full and unrestricted access: visiting all facilities, attending design meetings, partying with the crew after hours, even helping out with flight tests. The result of this rare freedom is a book that makes Gary Hudson, his wife Anne, most of the Rotary employees she profiles, indeed almost everyone she profiles, appear neurotic or self-deluded or both. Gary is presented as a chronic failure. Weil dwells on his succession of six failed companies, but never seems to consider that those failures could be due to anything other than his incompetence. (He has, after all, no formal training in aerospace engineering.) Additionally, though never saying so explicitly, she drops broad hints that he might be bilking investors out of their money.1

Ms. Weil says very little about the engineering details of the Roton, the innovative spaceship that Rotary Rocket was trying to build.2 I presume this is because she has little technical education. This does not stop her from proclaiming that the Roton will never work. Since lack of formal technical training is something she feels makes Gary Hudson unqualified to lead the team building the Roton, I think it is only fair to ask why she felt qualified to write a book about the project.

It's not only the people of Rotary Rocket who come off badly in Ms. Weil's account. Anyone involved in a similar activity is liable to be tarred with the same brush. If they have any unattractive personal characteristic, you can bet it will be mentioned, and probably exaggerated, in the text.

I hold that routine, affordable access to space is both attainable and valuable.3 This was, therefore, a very difficult book to review, as it was to read. I was tempted to quote great passages from it, and then dissect the reasoning in them (or the lack of it). Instead I'll summarize my conclusion thus: In her account, Elizabeth Weil gets both the people and the technology wrong. The story of Gary Hudson and Rotary Rocket deserves to be told in a book. Perhaps, someday, someone will write that book.

OK, I will give you one passage. Describing a weekly design review, led by Marti Sarigul-Klijn, which Ms. Weil sat in on, she has this to say (emphasis added):

The phrases I highlighted above convince me that Ms. Weil doesn't understand engineering in general or the Roton in particular. In fairness, I must add this: I felt that Ms. Weil's outlook on Rotary Rocket grew more favorable toward the end of the book. I also think she enjoyed the time she spent there. Why else would she thank every employee by name, at the back of the book?4 However, I feel she repaid their trust poorly. Regarding the tune from which she took her book's title, I'm sure she knows its chorus gives each denigrated inventor the last laugh. This might be another point in her favor. Nevertheless, I think it appropriate to close this review with a verse from a Frank Sinatra classic written by Kay & Gordon:

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This page was last modified on 13 August 2024.