Rating: 
Summary: For Those Who Love Frustration
Review: As I was reading this, I noticed a pattern for Gary Hudson :
Start a rocket company, hype it, get money, fail;
Repeat as needed (maybe Gary Hudson NEEDED to?).
I found the "smoking gun", however, in a very telling passage, where Gary laments that he wasted all of these years on trying to make rockets for the dreams he had of space travel, and that he was led astray by a book, "Profiles of the Future", by arthur C. CLarke.
Now, I thumbed open my own well-read copy of "Profiles", and here is what I read :
"It is an act of faith among science-fiction writers, and an increasing number of people in the astronautics business, that there must be some safer, quieter, cheaper, and generally less messy way of getting to the planets than rockets."
Next time, Gary READ THE BOOK ("Profiles"), OK?
Rating:
Summary: For Those Who Love Frustration
Review: As I was reading this, I noticed a pattern for Gary Hudson :
Start a rocket company, hype it, get money, fail;
Repeat as needed (maybe Gary Hudson NEEDED to?).
I found the "smoking gun", however, in a very telling passage, where Gary laments that he wasted all of these years on trying to make rockets for the dreams he had of space travel, and that he was led astray by a book, "Profiles of the Future", by arthur C. CLarke.
Now, I thumbed open my own well-read copy of "Profiles", and here is what I read :
"It is an act of faith among science-fiction writers, and an increasing number of people in the astronautics business, that there must be some safer, quieter, cheaper, and generally less messy way of getting to the planets than rockets."
Next time, Gary READ THE BOOK ("Profiles"), OK?
Rating: 
Summary: I was there, and I was very disappointed in this book.
Review: As someone who worked at Rotary and had a great deal to do with making the Roton ATV fly, I had been looking forward to reading this book. The material for a great read was certainly there. However, this book is intensly and wrongly negative, unfair, and unkind to many of the principles, and certainly to the goal of space access for the masses. I had never noticed that Gary Hudson's hands shake; mentioning that more than once is nothing more than narcissistic indulgence by the author. Personally, I would like to have been mentioned in the context of my contribution to the Rotary effort rather than (twice) that of having a dead daughter or as "the mechanic". References to the technology are also full of errors.
Those with enough interest in the subject to relate to the alternate access to space movement will be insulted by association right from the Forward. You have probably read a few Science Fiction classics; the author admits to being completely unfamiliar with them, and thus has an unqualified frame of reference. Perhaps the author should have spent more of her time in Mojave actually researching the story, and less of it chasing the single guys there. Don't waste your money on this book.
Rating:
Summary: Editors? Fact Checkers?
Review: At this point, this is probably beating a dead horse, but: I just bought a used copy of the book and started reading it last night. I was all set to like it: my appetite was whetted by a beautifully written and very entertaining account of the new space entrepreneurs that Ms. Weil wrote for The New York Times Magazine a few years back.
My problems started on page 1. The very first sentence of the book features a couple small factual errors: "... when, in 1969, American astronauts finally reached the moon in a Saturn V rocket. ..." No: The Saturn V rocket launched them on their mission from Earth; they arrived at the moon in an Apollo capsule. Also, the Apollo 11 crew was the first to land on the moon; to be persnickety, they were the third crew to reach the moon, having been preceded by Apollo 8 and Apollo 10, which both orbited the moon but did not land.
But anyone can make little mistakes like that; and an editor or fact checker should have saved Ms. Weil from them. But by page 3, we find more of the same when she writes about NASA's Challenger disaster. "In NASA parlance, at 12:47 p.m. EST, shuttle mission 51-L 'catastrophically disassembled' while traveling at a Mach number of 1.92, killing all seven members of the crew." I won't deal with what's wrong with the writing here, or the fact much of her description appears to be a slightly garbled lift from a NASA narrative of the Challenger launch. Instead, just this: Of all the facts related in the sentence, what's the one you'd figure would be the easiest to get right. I think it's the time. But 12:47 p.m. EST didn't sound right to me, so I went and checked. The actual launch time, as reported by NASA, was 11:38 a.m. EST, and the accident happened 73 seconds into the flight. So: 12:47 p.m.? No.
On page 4, she mentions "solid rocket boosters, the shuttle component that first analysis suggested had failed. (Richard Feynman, of course, later set a glass of ice water before the television cameras and proved the culprit to be the O-rings.")
Yes, but: The first analysis was right. One of the solid rocket boosters failed. The question was why. The answer was the O-ring seals -- parts used in the boosters -- didn't function properly in the cold.
You might say each of these errors of fact or interpretation is trivial. I won't argue about that. But there's a cumulative effect: They undermine confidence in the rest of the facts Ms. Weil relates, too.
Rating:
Summary: What did they hire you for?
Review: First of all I would like to give all the people who worked for Rotary Rocket a hats off for the work they did accomplish. To keep this short and simple I think that the author Liz Wiel needs to pay more attention to detail. Another reveiw says she is an "amazing observer", I dont think she really observed the things she was hired to observe. Her book was nothing but flaws from begining to end. I would highly recommend NOT waisting money on this book, if you must read this I would suggest waiting till its available in thrift stores or libraries.
It seems to me the book is more about the area and the companies employees, not the company and its venture. Maybe next time Liz can pay more attention to the matter at hand. By the way I am not quite sure what kind of mind altering drugs the author was on but the area (Mojave, CA) in which this book takes place in is not at all as it is described.
Rating: 
Summary: A great account of a spectacular failure
Review: I thought that this was a fun read. I have met many of the people in the book, and I have always wondered why they kept working on the rocket after they gave up on the engine, and this book explains it all. (Walt kept giving them money) Some of Gary's associates have complained that the author has treated him harshly, but I have heard much worse about him from others. Also some people have complained about the technical errors, but this is not a technical book. This book was entertaining, and a little scary for me, because I have a rocket problem as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Technical Errors Hint at Other Errors?
Review: Some technical errors popped out at me while reading this book. The rocket equation needs parentheses. Triggering an igniter several seconds prior to t-minus zero does not 'allow' mixing, it prevents a fuel build-up from leading to an explosion. Specific impulse is not 'the amount of time it takes to achieve a pound of thrust' but the amount of time a pound of fuel can sustain a pound of thrust. Unmanned vehicles are not two thousand times more likely to fail than manned vehicles, the unmanned Delta has a 97% success rate versus 98% for the Shuttle. Did the author have an engineer review her book, or is technical fact-checking optional for writers who get into the New York Times Literary Supplement? This inattention to simple technical detail makes me wonder how accurate the rest of the book is, and whether the quotes are accurate as well. One thing does emerge: building a tall helicopter when you're supposed to build a spaceship is not the greatest idea in the world.
Rating:
Summary: A Disappointing Book About A Fascinating Topic
Review: The problem with Weil's book is that, if you pick it up in order to read about what is involved in trying to build a new, low-cost space launch vehicle, it doesn't tell you very much at all. Rather, it is a colorful "human interest" story about the people of Rotary Rocket Company, who tried to build such a vehicle, but failed in that particular attempt. For those who are seriously interested in the question of how to get from where we are today to a vehicle that can make space affordable and accessible, this book will disappoint. She treats the whole enterprise as a science fiction fantasy, completely lacking in any rational justification. Weil fails to make any of the obvious comparisons with the people and ventures responsible for building the aviation industry - literally from the ground up - in the early years of the last century. Some of them were successful, many failed, and many kept on trying until they did succeed. The aviation pioneers were considered eccentric at best, or crazy at worst. Maybe some of them were, but millions of airline passengers benefit from their craziness on a regular basis. If you like to read about interesting people, then maybe you'll enjoy this book. If you want insight into the many technical and business issues that need to be addressed in the process of building spaceships, don't expect much here.
Rating:
Summary: A Disappointing Book About A Fascinating Topic
Review: The problem with Weil's book is that, if you pick it up in order to read about what is involved in trying to build a new, low-cost space launch vehicle, it doesn't tell you very much at all. Rather, it is a colorful "human interest" story about the people of Rotary Rocket Company, who tried to build such a vehicle, but failed in that particular attempt. For those who are seriously interested in the question of how to get from where we are today to a vehicle that can make space affordable and accessible, this book will disappoint. She treats the whole enterprise as a science fiction fantasy, completely lacking in any rational justification. Weil fails to make any of the obvious comparisons with the people and ventures responsible for building the aviation industry - literally from the ground up - in the early years of the last century. Some of them were successful, many failed, and many kept on trying until they did succeed. The aviation pioneers were considered eccentric at best, or crazy at worst. Maybe some of them were, but millions of airline passengers benefit from their craziness on a regular basis. If you like to read about interesting people, then maybe you'll enjoy this book. If you want insight into the many technical and business issues that need to be addressed in the process of building spaceships, don't expect much here.
Rating:
Summary: Required reading for all Space Cadets
Review: There seem to be two reactions to this book: pro-space activists think it's trash, while the normal people who seemingly read it by accident all love it. Here's a third perspective: I strongly believe that we need cheap, reusable, privately owned launch vehicles like the one Rotary Rocket tried to develop. But I love this book because it reveals exactly why none of the many Mom & Pop rocket companies have ever produced one. The main problem is that the people who are strongly motivated to start such firms are mostly impractical dreamers who lack the technical skills and business sense to make them work. Reading Weil's dispassionate description of the Roton development program is like watching the film "Ed Wood" -- you can't believe that these people actually existed and actually believed they were building a workable rocketship. The sane part of the space community always knew that the Roton would be a miserable technical failure for all the reasons given on p.167, but it is really scary to see just how out of touch with reality the major players like Gary Hudson and Walt Anderson really were. And these guys are still active in the alt.space community! I sure hope Elon Musk's SpaceX project succeeds so we don't have to watch any more of these painful failures.
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