Jim Cantrell

Breaking All The Rules

Breaking All The Rules: The Inside Story of the New Race traces the origins of a second Space Race that began at the end of the original 1960's US-Soviet space race and eventually led to SpaceX and the explosive growth in commercial space being seen today. The story covers how this revolution began with a band of misfit engineers and scientists and the inside story of how this was eventually ignited with the money and vision of billionaires such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. With the current space economy approaching one trillion dollars per year, this amazing story shows how serendipity, historical change, discontented individuals, entrepreneurial vision and immense wealth combined to change the world as we know it. Breaking All The Rules: The Inside Story Of the New Space Race explores the human motivation for exploration and posits that this instinct lives deep within our collective DNA. It is this urge to explore, to take risks and to find something better around the corner that has driven the modern Space Race and is embodied by many of the individuals that played fundamental roles in the space revolution. In many ways, the modern space race is a revolution that reflects the times in which it was born: during the Cold War. The story covers the origins of US/Soviet space cooperation at the end of the Cold War, its transition through the fall of the Soviet Union and into the US government efforts to stop brain-drain in post Soviet Russia. This episode perversely led to the origins of SpaceX and many of the same personalities that led to this unlikely outcome continued with SpaceX and the booming commercial space industry as a whole. Author Jim Cantrell is the consummate space insider whose 35 years in the space business has given him a front row seat to the inside happenings as the New Space Race played out. Sometimes self described as the "Forrest Gump Of Space", Jim's story is an amazing intersection with historical figures and historical events. From working with the Soviets in east-west space cooperation near the end of the Soviet Union, to joint US/Russian missile defense experiments, to the founding of SpaceX, Jim was there and tells the story in a compelling first person narrative that puts the reader alongside the author as events unfold. This is a story as only an insider can tell it and is a compelling first person narrative of the unique individuals that started the New Space Race and those that fueled it into what it is today. When the first person sets foot on Mars sometime in the not so distant future, you can say that you too "were there in the beginning" having read this fascinating insider account of the events, people and forces that is leading to this massive human milestone.