Test Gods

Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut

By: Nicholas Schmidle

Narrated by: Nicholas Schmidle

Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's Summary

This program is read by the author.

In the spirit of The Right Stuff, updated for the 21st century, Test Gods is an epic story about extreme bravery and sacrifice, about the thin line between lunacy and genius. Most of all, it is a story about the pursuit of meaning in our lives - and the fulfillment of our dreams.

Working from exclusive inside reporting, New Yorker writer Nicholas Schmidle tells the remarkable story of the test pilots, engineers, and visionaries behind Virgin Galactic’s campaign to build a space tourism company. Schmidle follows a handful of characters - Mark Stucky, Virgin’s lead test pilot; Richard Branson, the eccentric billionaire funding the venture; Mike Moses, the grounded, unflappable president; Mike Alsbury, the test pilot killed in a fatal crash; and others - through personal and professional dramas, in pursuit of their collective goal: to make space tourism a reality. 

Along the way, Schmidle weaves his relationship with his father - a former fighter pilot and decorated war hero - into the tragedies and triumphs that Branson’s team confronts out in the Mojave desert as they design, build, and test-fly their private rocket ship. Gripping and novelistic, Test Gods leads us, through human drama, into a previously unseen world - and beyond. 

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company

©2021 Nicholas Schmidle (P)2021 Macmillan Audio

accurate acount

I was an engineer at Scaled and part of the team that designed and built SpaceShipTwo.
I worked daily with Forger and the others in this book. this account of what happened is very accurate.

A tale of fatherhood, family, colleagues, friends, aviators, astronauts and so much more

A much deeper story than Commercial access to space. A tale of fatherhood, family, colleagues, friends, aviators, astronauts and so much more. I was intrigued at the surface of the book about commercial space from a test pilot’s perspectives but what I found was even better! The author is an excellent storyteller and performs the reading in a way that puts you into the action. I was recommended this book by a close friend and I waited far to link to dive in. I’m looking forward to more awesome content from this author. From a pilot and aerospace engineer’s perspective this book had great technical content and was very accurately depicted, that is very rare!

Forger is a bad ass

It’s great to hear this story with all the inside details. Very interesting and real. Forger sounds like a fun person to have a beer with.

Must read

History of the space industry that is a must read. Fairly recent history to know.

A Window Into Commercial Space

Entertaining story covering failures, triumphs and future hopes. The book is an interesting blend of personal stories, their impact on other people in the story (including the Author) and what the events of this story might mean for the future of commercial space (be it tourism, exploration or both).

Accurate

I was aquatinted with the Spaceship Company in Mojave in 2019 and 2021. Plus I had a friend who previously worked for Scaled Composites and knew a lot of the pilots and workers. The story told in this book in my opinion is accurate and very well done. My hat is off to Nicholas Schindler for injecting the human element into the difficult and dangerous task of going into space.

Approved by Burt Rutan

This was a fantastic story to hear about a company I invest in. Recently the company I work for in Coeur d Alene Idaho hosted Burt Rutan as a speaker for a "fireside chat" one question he was asked was, "what are 3 books you think everyone should read?" This was his first recommendation and he talked about it for 10 mins. This was a fantastic story and awesome to know information about our town will be forever remembered. Thank you for this literary artwork.

Unexpectedly good

What I thought was a story about test pilots transforms into a wonderful reflection on fathers and sons and efforts to “push the envelope.”. Although not as high profile, this is every bit as good as THE RIGHT STUFF.

Exceptional

This topic is near and dear to my heart. Usually when I read books about it, they are "journalistic" misunderstandings of much of the material. And so this one, the author having done such a good job, gave me extra pleasure. Any sort of an understanding of the pilot soul can seldom be found by someone who is not one of us, and rarely well articulated BY any of us. This guy, in attempt to understand his father, as well as the main pilot in this account, has managed to accomplish this rare and difficult feat with touching grace.

Of course, since I will almost certainly never get to space, a knowledge that I have had to live when since the day when I was twenty-three years old and got the second letter from the Navy telling me that Congress had cancelled funding for the NAVCAD program and I would not be going to Naval Air Officer Candidate School in Pensacola to become an aviator after all, this story was especially hard to read. Yet it was well worth the pain.

I also have the redemptive knowledge that even though the near certain failure of Virgin Galactic to ever achieve their ultimate goals has led to them summarily firing a real "right stuff" exhibiting pilot like Stucky, that he is better off at Space-X anyway. I am glad that he was one of the first two Americans to return to orbit on an American spacecraft, after all that time we were a non-spacefaring nation, ending the shame of riding to the International Space Station on enemy spacecraft.

God Speed, Forger!

interesting but full of filler

the book was interesting and candid, but crammed full of filler, especially at the end. it was also surprisingly blind to the shocking selfishness and snobby elitism of the pilots. the effort to tie in the story of his father with the story of virgin galactic goes nowhere and is pointless.