MixedThe Wall Street JournalAriosto convincingly argues that we are still in the early days of the revolution that Mr. Musk set in motion by developing the ability to reuse rockets. But Open Space is a flawed guide to this vital territory. The book’s 47 staccato chapters jump from one subject to another without much of a discernible pattern. Before Mr. Ariosto is able to sufficiently explore some important topic, he switches to a completely different subject ... The book’s lack of discipline is unfortunate because Mr. Ariosto’s enthusiasm for space is evident ... A step in the right direction but a smaller one than it could have been.
Greg Milner
MixedThe Wall Street JournalMr. Milner is a brisk and funny guide to the bureaucratic and technological infighting in the U.S. military, which created GPS over the course of several decades beginning in the immediate aftermath of the 1957 launch of Sputnik ... Mr. Milner is a mostly competent guide through GPS’s technical intricacies. But he is strongest at taking the reader through its commercial and scientific applications ... Mr. Milner falls short, however, in answering the most difficult, and most interesting, of the questions he raises, which is what GPS is doing to our minds.
