Friday, August 30, 2019

How to build spaceship - book review

How many of us know about early life of Peter Diamandis, founder of X prize, founder of Singularity university?
Then you shouldn't miss this book "How to make a spaceship: A band of renegades, an epic race and the birth of private space flight" by Julian Guthrie.

And this book is not only for people interested to build ROCKETS but for all those who DREAM.
Some interesting insights I gained from this book

  • The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line when you travelling in a flight! As Earth is a sphere, round, in olden days pilots without gyroscope, would pull a rubber band between two points they are travelling and leave it, when the rubber band loses tension it returns to its curve position to give you the closest distance. 
  • Sometimes the solutions is so obvious that we over think about it, which takes us far away from the solution. The SpaceshipOne flight had an outer varnish covering of Epoxy fluid, which helped to prevent it from overheating. But, Burt Rutan wanted to patent, so he literally added herbs and oregano and named it as some patented solution. 
  • Peter Diamandis didn't have the $10 million prize to give away for X prize winner, but it didn't stop him from announcing this competition. After announcement he went on to pitch almost more than 60 to 70 entrepreneurs to sponsor it. Richard Branson meeting was the 60th meeting and even he rejected to sponsor. Quite, surprisingly, he was the one who finally invested and sponsored Spaceship One for $2 mn just before 2 weeks from final take off. 
  • Peter Diamandis was a medical student since his parents wanted him to take up medicine. But he became astrophysicist from MIT before joining medical. It amazed me that he was running a company to make spacecraft for sub orbital flight, so people can experience zero gravity PLUS running Association for space Tourism across the world, had launched Space X prize and looking for sponsor + "studying medicine"



If you can dream Big, and work towards it with all your passion, their is no stopping.

This book was written by Julian Guthrie and After Spaceship 1 win the Ansari SpaceX prize, Stephen Hawking suggest  Peter Diamandis to write a book on this entire experience, so technically this a Peter's biography prior to start of Singularity University.

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