Michael Belfiore

I'm a freelance writer focused on breakthrough technologies poised to change our world for the better.

I'm the author of Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space (Smithsonian Books, 2007).

My current projects include articles and other reporting for Popular Science and Wired, as well as a book due from Smithsonian Books in 2009 about DARPA, the Defense Advanced Projects Agency.

You can read more about me, join my mailing list, link to my blog, order a signed book, or contact me on this site.

Early in the morning of June 21, 2004, a new space age dawned. That's when a hand-built craft the size of a minivan rocketed the first commercial astronaut into space.

SpaceShipOne was built by a small company in the Mojave Desert for the price of a low-budget Hollywood movie. Now that it's broken the government monopoly on human spaceflight, the sky's no longer the limit on where a dream can take you.

Rocketeers chronicles the beginning of the second space age, one powered by private enterprise rather than government programs. From the first privately funded manned spaceflights to the building of the first commercial spaceports and space stations, Rocketeers presents the inside story of a new industry that might just change the world.