Book Review: The Space Barons by Christian Davenport

As the U.S. government goes on a wild goose chase for its next goal in space, NASA going around in circles as it complies, the private space industry is now moving in, and not a moment too soon. Since its last voyage to the Moon (Apollo 17) back in 1972, the U.S. and NASA has retreated to Earth orbit, with Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, and the space shuttle. The shuttle was a noble experiment meant to cut costs and fly to space constantly, but alas, it turned out to be the most expensive and required constant maintenance after each flight. It turned out that in the end, a flight would cost $1.5 billion, and in its run, two ships were destroyed in flight, killing 14 astronauts.
Enter the private space industries, that builds rockets from scratch, launches them at one tenth the cost, so far, and reuses the first stage. Virgin Galactic, being in the tourist business, launches their ships from an airplane at 35,000 feet all the way up to the beginning of suborbital space.
This book focuses on three industrialists: Elon Musk, of SpaceX (and Tesla), Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin, and Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic. Other companies are mentioned, that started but were unsuccessful, but these three are the top space barons, for now.
As stated, Richard Branson is focusing on space tourism with Virgin Galactic, but the two competitors are Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and they are at it like dogs. SpaceX has mostly dominated the headlines, with its Dragon capsule supplying the International Space Station (ISS) and the first stage of the Falcon 9 returning to Earth to be reused, rather than be dumped into the ocean. They've also made the news with the Falcon Heavy, the new Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle, with the hope of eventually reaching Mars.
Blue Origin is the quieter company, but they are competing closely with Space X on its own space taxi along with their reusable first stage rockets.
These alone make Musk and Bezos fiercely compete and make the race interesting. There are even anecdotes on them being on stage with other executives, but these two avoiding each other like the plague. It's that fierce.
Fortunately, it's good for the rest of humanity because the space launch business is finally being made available to the general public, with ever decreasing launch costs, and this alone will finally get the U.S. and all of humanity back into space, the next frontier, this time without an end.
As for NASA, my recommendation for them is to completely get out of the launch business and save taxpayer money by leasing rockets from private companies at a fraction of the cost.
After a 40 year delay, The Space Barons will help take humanity to the stars.
Read the book. It's exciting and filled with tidbits of little known facts, some even amusing, having little to do with space itself (one even involving a gambling casino in Las Vegas), but you see the goings on in the space business.