How to Make a Spaceship

A New York Times bestseller!  The historic race that reawakened the promise of manned spaceflight A Finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award   Alone in a Spartan black cockpit, test pilot Mike Melvill rocketed toward space. He had eighty seconds to exceed the speed of sound and begin the climb to a target no civilian pilot had ever reached. He might not make it back alive. If he did, he would make history as the world’s first commercial astronaut. The spectacle