To keep good things running, I’ll post here about the book I read throughout the year:
- “Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age” , by Eric Berger: 4/5, great successor to “Liftoff” on the time at SpaceX that created the Falcon 9 and Starlink, with early preview into Starship. Crazy company, motivating anyone to grind until success. Reversed the paradigm in space flight to try launching a perfect rocket, versus getting better incrementally. And they are still flying strong.
- “Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed” , by Ben Rich and Leo Janos: 5/5, really inspiring how a rather small group of specialists created amazing technical progress in a time well before modern computing, namely stealth technology. They created the flying origami, which eventually became the F-117A, as well as the SR-71 Blackbird. Back in the days, they were able to finish highly complex projects both on time, and under budget.
- “Stealth: The Secret Contest to Invent Invisible Aircraft” , by Dr. Peter Westwick: 4/5, perfect follow-up on Ben Rich’s book on Skunk Works. Includes the view of Northrop on how the B-2 became to be, and how the development team worked very differntely compared to Lockheed (less computers, more experimental). Still flying today, but absurdly expensive. Now I’m only lacking books on how F-22 and F-35 came to be, as well as rest-of-the-world planes.
Last update on 2026-03-09, thanks for listening!
