Hey everybody, Rob Maurer here, and today we have the good fortune to be joined by Eric

Berger.

He is the Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica, also the founder of Space City Weather, and

most recently, the author of Liftoff, which is the story of the founding and launch of

SpaceX.

So thanks for joining us, Eric.

Happy to be here, Rob.

So the book just came out this week.

I thought it would be a great opportunity to talk to you about it, get some insight

on Elon Musk, the founding of SpaceX, even though this is sort of a Tesla podcast, we've

been talking a lot about SpaceX over the last six months as Starlink potentially gets

ready for an IPO or something of that nature here pretty soon, or in the near future at

least.

So why don't you just tell us a little bit about the process of writing the book, how long

has this been in the works for you?

So it was about the time of the Falcon Heavy Launch back in 2018 that I realized I'm

a long time space reporter and I've covered that industry from NASA and everything else

that goes with it.

And SpaceX, obviously, had been a very interesting company throughout the 2010s, but them nailing

that launch on the first attempt and then the landing the booster side by side was sort

of a moment where I realized that this company is not just interesting, they're like transformative

and the most important space company, certainly in my generation.

...