A riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of the New Space Age, chronicling Elon Musk’s dominant SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s resurgent Blue Origin, and the high-stakes, grit-fueled global battle to push humankind further into the cosmos—from an Emmy and Peabody award-winning Washington Post reporter

A fleet of modern rockets among the most powerful in the world. A lunar land rush that has sparked a competition over the strategic high ground as well as scientific discoveries that could offer new insights into the origins of the solar system. Escalating brinkmanship between the world’s two richest men. Space has entered a golden age, and this is just the beginning. After the first Trump administration launched the Artemis program, NASA created a historic competition that pit Elon Musk’s SpaceX against Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, flanked far away by Russia and China. At stake: billions of dollars, national prestige, and a place in the history books.

In this gripping work, veteran reporter Christian Davenport chronicles the mad scramble to shape humanity’s off-planet future. He takes readers behind the scenes at NASA and the Pentagon as China’s aggressive moon mining and military plans raise alarms, onto the sprawling Cape Canaveral factory where Bezos works toward Amazon-style lunar deliveries, and onto SpaceX launch pads as Musk’s engineers log 100-hour weeks, ultimately pulling off the harrowing but triumphant launch of its first human spaceflight mission—leaving veteran astronauts marveling that they’re now operating “flying iPhones.”

What will happen as frenetic public and private ambition outpaces governmental regulation? Who will win the race to the moon, and will the U.S. finally be able to start a real push toward Mars?

Masterfully paced, rigorously reported, and vividly told, Rocket Dreams weaves cutting-edge science with high-stakes capitalism and old-fashioned nationalism into a vision of humanity’s next giant leap.