Publishers Weekly
★ 03/01/2021
New Yorker staff writer Schmidle (To Live or to Perish Forever) tells the exuberant, guts-and-glory tale of Virgin Galactic’s efforts to travel to space. Vivid portraits bring to life the people behind the bold project: Burt Rutan was “the most influential aerospace engineer of his generation,” and his company, Scaled, designed a ship for Virgin; Richard Branson comes through as a brash free-thinker who managed to turn a record company into a space tourism venture; Mike Moses, an aerospace engineer who previously worked at NASA, tries to “shed some realism” on the company’s ambitions; and test pilot Mark Stucky is a retired fighter pilot who dreamed his whole life of becoming an astronaut. Schmidle tempers his take on these “test gods” with the harsh reality of their single-minded passion and its cost in terms of money, time, relationships, and in some cases lives—one of the most powerful scenes describes the test flight that killed Mike Alsbury in 2014. Along the way, Schmidle movingly tells of his relationship with his own father, a fighter pilot who was an instructor when Stucky was a lieutenant. With brisk prose, extensive interviews, and plenty of panache, Schmidle captures “the difference between fighter pilots and everybody else.” The result is a page-turner, perfect for anyone in search of a story about the incredible coming within reach. Photos. (May)
From the Publisher
A riveting account of the underreported commercial space race, which has up until now lacked a worthy storyteller…The sections of the book that narrate how Virgin Galactic gets to space are replete with white-knuckled descriptions of booster rockets, pilots braving the ‘transonic zone,’ everything you’d hope to read were Mailer or Wolfe alive today to tell the tale…[a] deeply reported and deeply personal book. It is a masterly work, a reminder of what should inspire us all.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“[I]n a cinematic style that moves seamlessly in and out of characters’ inner monologues…[and] fluid, precise prose…[Schmidle drops] the journalist’s pretension of total detachment…Schmidle's care…sets this book apart from more familiar representations of airborne masculinity.”
—The Washington Post
“New Yorker writer Nicholas Schmidle unpacks the star-crossed space tourism company Virgin Galactic. The book focuses on the test pilots tasked with turning Richard Branson's hare-brained idea—a suborbital space trip in a small rocket dropped from a large plane—into a painstakingly engineered, catastrophically disaster-tested reality.”
—GQ
“Test Gods tells the story of Mark Stucky, the lead test pilot for Virgin Galactic, a space tourism startup in Mojave, California, as he…become[s] one of the rare non-NASA pilots to earn astronaut wings…At its center, however, it is a story of fathers and sons—and this emotional core ought to grab readers who might not care about rocket propellant or lifting surfaces or horizontal stabilizers…Test Gods is a human story…a gripping, comprehensive, and deeply felt book.”
—The American Scholar
“It’s hard to know where to begin: Test Gods is unique, fascinating, compulsively readable, brilliantly reported with unprecedented access, a kick-ass adventure story of the last of the great swashbucklers addicted to speed and altitude. It is a journey unlike any I have ever read, as pulsating as it is poignant and personal. What makes a man routinely risk his life for a living umpteen miles above the clouds? What does he leave behind on earth? Cosmic questions that Schmidle answers with elegance and beauty and pace. Just strap yourself in and get ready for one helluva ride.”
—Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights
"If you want to know what being a test pilot truly looks and feels and even smells like, read this riveting book. Schmidle has done something remarkable, capturing all the visceral grit we experience inside the cockpit, in addition to all the tragedies and triumphs that we encounter along the way. This is the book about the New Space Race you've been waiting to read. An instant classic."
—Scott Kelly, astronaut and New York Times bestselling author of Endurance: My Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery
“Test Gods is an absolutely stunning piece of work. The intimacy of this book is a testament to Schmidle’s journalistic superpowers. He is more than a fly on the wall: he’s immersed in the lives of these test pilots, and he’s written a feverish, true-life thriller that burns with emotional energy.”
—Martha Raddatz, co-anchor of ABC’s “This Week” and New York Times bestselling author of The Long Road Home
“A hurtling narrative about the test pilots of the Virgin Galactic space program, Test Gods is a hugely ambitious feat of reporting and storytelling and a fitting twenty-first-century sequel to The Right Stuff. Schmidle captures not just the technical wizardry of the spaceships and the envelope-pushing prowess of the pilots, but also the very real costs, for the pilots and their families, of reaching for something beyond this world. This is a saga not just of bravery and derring-do, but of a kind of undaunted old fashioned hope that feels all too rare these days."
—Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Say Nothing
"Vivid portraits bring to life the people behind the bold project... With brisk prose, extensive interviews, and plenty of panache, Schmidle captures ‘the difference between fighter pilots and everybody else.’ The result is a page-turner, perfect for anyone in search of a story about the incredible coming within reach."
—Publishers Weekly, *starred review*
“The thrilling, perilous, and sometimes deadly adventures of the people who are making the dream of commercial space travel a reality…[Schmidle] applies his personal interest in aerospace subjects to this book’s extensive research and in-depth interviews.”
—Library Journal, *starred review*
“[Schmidle juggles] journalistic objectivity, clear admiration for his pioneering biographical subjects, and tribute to his father…Schmidle’s agile, compassionate narratives serve as an exciting first word on the subject. A candid and revealing portrayal of extraordinary people striving to breach one of humanity’s final frontiers.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
2021-02-16
An intrepid writer for the New Yorker delivers the inside story of the private space industry’s first spaceship.
Schmidle is a talented journalist, but his achievement getting behind the scenes at Virgin Galactic, one of Richard Branson’s most sensational and expensive endeavors, is especially impressive. “It was beyond zany, Branson’s dream of sending passengers into space aboard this handmade craft they called SpaceShipTwo,” writes the author. “But the zany ones were often the ones who made history.” Even reported more traditionally, the story would magnetize readers. There are certainly echoes of The Right Stuff, and Schmidle does an effective job in his juggling of journalistic objectivity, clear admiration for his pioneering biographical subjects, and tribute to his father, Robert Schmidle, a much-admired fighter pilot. In addition to the flamboyant showman Branson, there are appearances by Microsoft’s Paul Allen, who funded the $10 million X Prize that challenged private companies to reach space, as well as vignettes celebrating figures like John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, among others. To his credit, Schmidle drills down on a handful of significant figures, including Mark Stucky, a daredevil test pilot who had dreams of becoming an astronaut; peers like Mark Patterson, Luke Colby, and Mike Melville; and the visionary engineers that designed SpaceShipOne, most notably Burt Rutan, whose innovations in design and construction made the winning flight possible. Throughout, Schmidle delivers plenty of captivating drama, from the inevitable tragedy of fatal test-flight crashes to domestic strife stemming from the pilots’ singular obsession to the predictable friction between engineers trying to keep the spaceship in one piece and pilots who want to fly as fast and far as possible. Similar stories will be told about competing ventures like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin or Elon Musk’s SpaceX, but Schmidle’s agile, compassionate narrative serves as an exciting first word on the subject.
A candid and revealing portrayal of extraordinary people striving to breach one of humanity’s final frontiers.
