“When it comes to blasting huge hunks of metal into orbit, Jim Cantrell has seen it all. He's one of the best story tellers I know, and I can't wait to see all of his exploits come to life on the page’. - Ashlee Vance, author of Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
about breaking all the rules…
Breaking All The Rules: The Inside Story of the New Race to Space traces the origins of a second Space Race that slowly began with the end of the 1960’s US-Soviet space race. The new space race is leading one of today’s fastest growing economic sectors and an emerging multi trillion dollar economy. The once government dominated space industry is being rapidly transformed by modern technology, financial forces and a cadre of fascinating individuals with a determined vision to make humanity a spacefaring species. Breaking All The Rules tells the story of the new Space Race and how today’s NewSpace companies and its leaders have revolutionized the space industry to develop a permanent space economy on Earth and paving the path to the first space colonies.
The book explores the amazing and serendipitous sequence of events and the unusual collection of people that eventually led to the creation of SpaceX, Blue Origin and an army of space startups that are now transforming the space business landscape. Throughout the past 30 years, these individuals and visionaries remained dedicated to this vision but are now just becoming known for their roles as their successes mount. In a fascinating role reversal from the days of nation state space, these private space pioneers are today leading the space race and are transforming this dream into a financial and technical reality. This compelling story demonstrates how a small group of individuals who believe that they can change the world end up becoming the ones that do.
Breaking All The Rules is told through the eyes and life of Author Jim Cantrell who had a front row seat to the new space race and remains an active participant in it. Jim was a first-hand witness to the last days of the Soviet space program, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the post-cold-war pilfering of its space assets. His story ranges from the original Planetary Society ‘citizen space efforts’ to helping Elon Musk launching SpaceX to later co- founding numerous other NewSpace companies. Many authors have written about these early days1 2 but to date this story has remained untold by insiders. Breaking All The Rules tells this story for the first time in a first person narrative including the many amusing and anecdotes as only an insider can do. Using his life as a narrative for the larger story, Jim traces the roots of the early ‘citizen space’ efforts acting outside of NASA and other governmental space agencies to the modern combination of high net worth personalities and entrepreneurs fueled by massive venture capital funds. This fast moving industry has an equally fast moving story behind it. Jim’s personal story is a natural vehicle to tell this story and combines with his 30 years of perspective to offer a vision of humanity’s future in space.
Cantrell’s story begins with the roots of this modern revolution and tracks it from sleepy government laboratories where many of the ideas and concepts were hatched, through attempted coups in the Soviet Union which ended up adding ammunition to the coming space race, to citizen funded space efforts involving the Planetary Society and eventually to modern Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley who are funding the early stages of this transformation. This broader storyline becomes more significant in light of the successes of Musk and Bezos who are transforming the space industry by making space safe for investment and competing with NASA and traditional defense contractors 100 times their size. This continuing story provides an informative and entertaining context for the Billionaire story as well an interesting story in and of itself.
Origin Of Book
This book evolved from a collection of short story style writings by the author on various topics involving space, Elon Musk and the aerospace industry. These short story pieces were originally written as content on Quora, LinkedIn and SpaceNews websites and have received widespread acclaim. The Quora writings have been widely read and have resulted in the author becoming one of Quora’s Most Viewed Writers with more than 4.3 million individual views and over 300,000 followers on that site alone. Many of the Quora articles on Jim’s relationship with Elon Musk and the early stories of SpaceX have been reprinted in Forbes, Apple News, Huffington Post and other news sites resulting in tens of millions of additional views. Jim’s writing have led to him becoming a well known expert on the topics of Elon Musk, SpaceX, micro satellites and the so-called NewSpace commercial space industry and has made recent appearances discussing these topics on Fox Business News with Maria Bartiromo and from the New York Stock Exchange Floor on CNBC.
The motivation for this book derives from the author’s desire to tell the background story on SpaceX, Blue Origin and the new Race to Space. This history has become increasingly important with time and is forming an important part of the history of space exploration. To tell this story, Breaking All The Rules begins with many of the Quora short story themes and expands on them with interesting details that provides background and context to the larger story of the space industry evolution and its transition away from Nation State domination. Through these stories, the book examines the people behind the bigger story, explains many of their motivations and provides a real life portrait of the entertaining individuals that is both entertaining and informative.
Jim began his life in very meager and simple circumstances but was imbued with a drive to build machines, companies and encountered opportunities in life to impact space exploration. Jim wants to share that experience and promote the possibility that ‘anyone can do this’ with young people and adults alike who find this story inspirational. The hope is to help to motivate young people to both dream and pursue careers in science and technology and as entrepreneurs. Jim has received countless messages from young daydreamers worldwide finding inspiration in the stories he has told on Quora. It is the author’s hope that this body of work, told through the vehicle of his own life, will serve as a stimulus for a world in desperate need of being inspired.