Ashlee Vance ’00, author of the bestseller Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, turns his attention to the business of space in his latest book, When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach. Vance follows four startup companies—Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs and Rocket Lab—as they race to launch rockets and satellites into orbit. PCM’s Lorraine Wu Harry ’97 spoke to Vance about the book, the corresponding HBO show he is producing and, of course, Elon Musk. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PCM: What made you want to write this book?

Vance: I was not a space junkie (although I seem to be becoming one). Out of the Elon book, my favorite thing to report on was the early days of SpaceX. Those were some of the best stories and the most interesting characters. Right as I finished that book, I could see that there was this new world bubbling up around commercial space. And there were these entrepreneurs appearing all over the planet who were trying to make rockets and satellites. I could see that this was my chance to witness what may be like the early days of SpaceX firsthand. Then, as time went on, it became clear to me that there was this revolution taking place and that space was changing forever. And I had this unique “in” with all kinds of access that you don’t normally get, and I just started chasing it.

PCM: What was it like for you to do research for this book?

Vance: Normally, almost all this stuff is usually top secret. It’s almost impossible to get into, but because I had this track record, people were very willing to let me in, and then reporting it was just a proper adventure. I probably went to about 12 countries across four continents and followed this for five years. That’s one of the things I love about the book: It is about rockets and space, but it’s also this travelogue where you’re going with me on this journey and meeting all these interesting characters. Some of them are in the U.S., but it’s very much a global story and full of drama in all these places.

PCM: You say in the “Dear Reader” section, “I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed living it.” What did you enjoy about living it?

Vance: A lot of these launches take place in pretty exotic locations, and they’re both beautiful but also off the beaten path. The characters were very diverse in their personalities; there are a lot of different archetypes. You got to meet this quite eccentric group of people and spend a lot of time with them. It was this feeling of having a front-row seat to the birth of an industry and really getting to see how it operates. I do lots of very long magazine stories where you might interview dozens of people over a decent period of time. But this was the first time I felt like I was right there getting to witness everything firsthand, and you got a sense of the joy but also the difficulties and travails these people go through. It was the first time in my reporting where I really felt like I knew for sure what ground truth was, through my own eyes, as opposed to trying to stitch it together from other people’s opinions after the fact. I was living it in real time.

PCM: So this was pretty different from all your previous work.

Vance: With Elon, there was a lot of historical stuff where you had to go back all the way to his childhood and recreate things, and the same with some of his earlier companies. But I spent literally thousands of hours with these subjects and so, in that sense, very different in terms of the depth of the reporting. I’d wanted to be a fly on the wall of a journey for a long time.

PCM: Tell me about the show you’re producing and how it overlaps with the book.

Vance: I filmed with all the characters in my book for these five years and I’ve partnered with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and Adam McKay’s Hyperobject Industries on this project. It’s a more concentrated version of the book that is going to focus on a couple of characters from the book and tell the story about the rise of commercial space. As long as the stars align, it will be on HBO next year.

PCM: Your book about Elon Musk came out eight years ago, and a lot has happened since then. What is your assessment of Musk’s ownership of Twitter?

Vance: Since I’ve done the book, Elon’s only gotten bigger, bolder and crazier over time. I’m still a huge fan of Tesla and SpaceX and find them fascinating. Twitter is not really my cup of tea, and I think it’s a huge waste of time for Elon to be dealing with that. He’s not doing probably the best job of taking it over so far. It’s kind of sad, if I’m honest, because so much of my interest in him was this figure who was not doing consumer technology, was doing stuff that felt a bit more meaningful to me in the world of manufacturing and human ambition and climate change. Even though I use Twitter a lot, I find it to be sort of a large distraction and it falls more in the entertainment category to me. It’s a little depressing that this guy who symbolizes so many other things is getting down in the muck.

PCM: How do you think the recent FTX bankruptcy and Twitter meltdown have changed the idea that tech entrepreneurs can supplant traditional government?

Vance: We’re at a very interesting time where there’s a handful of technology companies that have resources on par with governments and are taking on projects that governments traditionally would have done. If you look at Tesla’s self-driving car network, if you look at all the rockets that I’m writing about, if you look at these giant computers fueling AI—outside of China, you don’t really see countries tackling these issues; it’s being driven by the companies. We’re at this precarious position where I think a lot of the innovation and control has shifted so far from governments and academia toward companies. I’m not sure that most people fully realize the extent of this shift to where if you are a college like Pomona or a university like Stanford, and you want to do breakthrough research on the human brain or something like that, you probably do not have the requisite resources to do that yourself. You’re knocking on the door of somebody like Google to borrow their computers. Overall, I’m not sure this is a good thing.

PCM: Why don’t you think it’s good?

Vance: There are pieces of this that are not good. There are pieces of this that are very liberating. I think it’s bad that five countries controlled space for 60 years. I think it’s a much more equitable future where almost any country that wants to be a spacefaring nation can be that. All the satellite imagery, all these pictures taken of Earth are not just in the hands of spy agencies and militaries. That the public can access all this stuff to see the sum total of human activity, what’s happening with the environment, it’s a much more open scenario with information. So I don’t know. There are a lot of pros and cons.

PCM: Would you say the pros outweigh the cons of commercial space?

Vance: I think it’s to be determined. I don’t think the average person on the street realizes what’s coming, which is that 100 percent, the capitalists have taken over space and the governments will very shortly be also-ran participants in this. People get fixated on space tourism or going to the moon, but in actual fact most of the money and action is taking place in low-Earth orbit where there’s this giant economic expansion taking place. This is very much a capitalist exercise that, on the pro side, is going to bring high-speed internet connectivity to half the world’s population so they can fully participate in the modern economy. We’re going to have all this data that was unimaginable about the health of our planet, monitoring trees, methane. You will be able to calculate and tax every piece of this, but it is companies that are doing this. This is new territory that’s being seized.

PCM: So, to be determined.

Vance: Hopefully, given that this is the last place we can expand, with a bit of luck we will be better stewards of it than we have been of the land and the oceans and the air.

Asian American Histories of the United States

In Asian American Histories of the United States, Catherine Ceniza Choy ’91 presents 200 years of Asian migration, labor and community formation, all the while reckoning with the recent surge in anti-Asian hate and violence.

Chloe and the Kaishao Boys

Chloe and the Kaishao Boys, a young adult rom-com by Mae Coyiuto ’17, follows a Chinese-Filipina girl in Manila as she gets off the waitlist for USC and decides if following her dreams is worth leaving everything behind.

The Last Cold Place

Naira de Gracia ’14 writes a memoir about her experience studying penguins in Antarctica, weaving in the history of Antarctic exploration, climate science and personal reflection in The Last Cold Place.

Tales of Whimsy, Verses of Woe

Tales of Whimsy, Verses of Woe by Tim DeRoche ’92 is a collection of lighthearted poetry filled with wordplay reminiscent of Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss.

I Have Her Memories Now

The short stories in I Have Her Memories Now by Carrie Grinstead ’06 touch on health, medicine and death and explore themes of vulnerability and fallibility.

Nocturne

The poetry of Jodie Hollander ’99 in Nocturne charts the emotional journey of the daughter of a professional classical pianist, exploring family dysfunction and musical obsession.

Tasting Coffee: An Inquiry into Objectivity

In Tasting Coffee: An Inquiry into Objectivity, Kenneth Liberman ’70 sheds light on the methods used to convert subjective experience into objective knowledge with coffee as its focal point.

Representation Theory and Geometry of the Flag Variety

Representation Theory and Geometry of the Flag Variety by William “Monty” McGovern ’82 is a reference for researchers and graduate students in representation theory, combinatorics and algebraic geometry.

Blue Jeans

In Blue Jeans, Carolyn Purnell ’06 presents extensive research on the history of jeans as well as the global and economic forces that shape the industry. The book is part of a series called Object Lessons about “the hidden lives of ordinary things.”

Quinoa: Food Politics and Agrarian Life in the Andean Highlands

Linda Seligmann ’75 tells the story of Indigenous farmers and the global demand for a superfood in Quinoa: Food Politics and Agrarian Life in the Andean Highlands.

The Way to Be: A Memoir

The Way to Be: A Memoir, a firsthand account of the life and work of artist Barbara T. Smith ’53, accompanies an exhibition on view at the Getty Research Institute through July 16, 2023.

Beyond That, the Sea

The novel Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash ’81 follows Beatrix, an 11-year-old British girl sent to live with a New England family during World War II, as she navigates two worlds.

After Anne: A Novel of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Life

After Anne: A Novel of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Life by Logan Steiner ’06 tells the story behind the story of the author of Anne of Green Gables, offering a nuanced portrayal of her life.

Democracy in Latin America: A History Since Independence

In Democracy in Latin America: A History Since Independence, Thomas Wright ’63 chronicles Latin America’s struggle for democracy as well as the challenges that lie ahead.

John’s Turn

In this children’s book, Mac Barnett ’04 celebrates individuality through the story of a kid who finds the courage to show others his talent for dancing.

True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South during the Civil War and Reconstruction

Clayton Butler ’10 investigates the lives of white Unionists in three Confederate states who enlisted in the U.S. Army, shedding light on the complex story of the Civil War era.

Swimming to Syria

This chapbook by Sandy Feinstein ’74 is a collection of poems reflecting her experiences teaching at the University of Aleppo and traveling throughout Syria.

Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay

Liz Fosslien ’09 and Mollie West Duffy weave science with personal stories and original illustrations to examine uncomfortable feelings and lay out strategies for managing them.

Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi ’13 examines a question: What happens when refugees encounter Indigenous sovereignty struggles in the countries of their resettlement?

She Came from Mariupol

Alfred Kueppers ’93 has translated Natascha Wodin’s homage to her mother’s story of leaving Ukraine for Germany as part of the Nazi forced labor program during World War II.

Geology Underfoot in Death Valley and Eastern California: Second Edition

In a revised, full-color edition of this popular book, Allen Glazner ’76 and Arthur Sylvester ’59 guide readers through some of California’s most spectacular and scenic geology.

Hunting Nature: Ivan Turgenev and the Organic World

Thomas P. Hodge ’84 explores Ivan Turgenev’s relationship to nature through his passion for hunting, making a case that hunting profoundly influenced his writing.

Saving Ryan

Physician-scientist Emil Kakkis ’82 writes about his 30-year journey to develop a treatment for mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS), an ultra-rare genetic disease, and the young patient it saved.

Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake: Rice, Water, Earth

In this guide with 300 color photos, Nancy Matsumoto ’80 and Michael Tremblay invite the reader into the story of sake, offering histories, current trends and recommendations.

The Immersive Enclosure: Virtual Reality in Japan

Paul Roquet ’03 takes a critical look at virtual reality, uncovering how the technology is reshaping the politics of labor, gender, home and nation in Japan.

Yours Always

Henry Scott ’78 tells the story of his great-grandparents, a Southern man and a Northern woman, through their nearly 1,500 letters, their diaries and related historical accounts.

This spring, Garrett Hongo ’73 received the 2022 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, an annual prize presented to a writer who has had a substantial and distinguished career. Past winners of the award, presented by the Sewanee Review each year since 1987, include Howard Nemerov, Gwendolyn Brooks, Wendell Berry, Louise Glück and Billy Collins.

Both a poet and a memoirist, Hongo draws heavily upon his memories of growing up on the North Shore of O‘ahu and in Los Angeles. His time at Pomona also figures prominently in his recollections, and his poem “Under the Oaks at Holmes Hall, Overtaken by Rain” is inscribed on a plaque in the Smith Campus Center. Now a Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon, Hongo’s collections of poetry include The River of Heaven, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1989.

Shortly after Hongo visited campus for a reading this spring, PCM’s Lorraine Wu Harry ’97 talked with him about his recently published book, The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo, in which he delivers a personal memoir of his life as a poet vis-à-vis his decade-long quest for the ideal stereo setup. The interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

PCM: You have such a strong memory for things that happened even long ago.

Garrett Hongo: People have told me that. Things are very vivid in my mind. I remember easily, as it were. The phrase from William Wordsworth that poetry is “emotion recollected in tranquility”—I need to do it or else I’m unhappy. It’s how I create who I am, in a way. It’s not just to write but to be. I live in remembrance, and it’s something I need to do.

PCM: It seems like nostalgia also plays a strong role in your writing.

Hongo: I think it’s often characterized as nostalgia, but it’s a little different than that for me. Having been uprooted and moved to South Central L.A., it was something about living in a feeling that was no longer present in my life in L.A. that I had as a child in Hawai‘i. The German philosopher Friedrich Schiller talks about naive and sentimental poetry. The naive poet would be the poet who lives in emotions, and the sentimental poet is a poet who longs for the emotion previously lived. In that characterization, I would be a sentimental poet. However, I’m a sentimental poet in the sense that the emotion was not fully lived. It takes the activity of the recollection and that instigation of longing in order to complete the mental experience.

PCM: You talk about writing being for yourself. Do you did you find that this book met that need?

Hongo: People always question my obsession with hi-fi. They thought it was insanity. I didn’t even know it myself, but it was a way for me to meditate.

I really loved writing the book. I loved learning how to write the book because I didn’t know how to do it. I had all this conflict of memoir and I want to know about audio. How do you make it all work together? It was only after almost 10 years of not knowing what the hell I was doing, all of a sudden, I figured it out, and then the book came like that—boom. I’d written pieces of it. I basically wrote the whole book in a couple years, but it took eight years of not figuring it out. That seems to be my pattern for every book I write. What the hell am I doing? What is all this? I’m so awful. And I go through a lot of self-hate and castigation, and all of a sudden it breaks through.

PCM: Did you have experiences of remembering things you had forgotten?

Hongo: That’s what the book is. It’s about revelation and realization. As they say in self-help, it’s self-actualization in writing. My adoration of vacuum tubes is the same. I didn’t understand why I was so attracted to them. When I saw an amp online, I thought, “I gotta have a vacuum tube amp.” I said, “Well, I suppose that will reproduce the human voice better than transistor amps.” But what I was really doing was remembering my father. And I didn’t really realize that until I started fooling around with tube amps myself, and I remembered all those evenings with him, when he would solder together these kits and his vacuum tube amplifiers. It was also a kind of fulfillment because I would hear all the music that he could not in his losing his hearing.

As a poet, you feel confirmed in these kinds of emotions. You seek confirmation, blessing as it were, in the memories, and their pursuit gives you that. This is the way you build, as they say in psychology, personality. This is how you create subjectivity. But this is also the way ultimately you create lineage, ancestry and continuity of goodwill.

Like I say in the end of the book, my friend, Mahealani Pai, who I spent a couple of days with on the Big Island at Kaloko-Honokahau, I asked him why he was chanting or what he was chanting. He said he was chanting the names of his ancestors. I said, “Why you do that?” And he said, “So I will know them and they will know me.” And I said, “Oh, for what?” And he said, “So that when I make a decision and I chant, I will make a decision or choice in harmony with their spirits.”

It stayed in my mind. And it made sense for myself in terms of writing this book when I realized that I’m fulfilling something for my father in my own quest, and it was also a quest to become his heir, his scion, his descendant in this life, to be truly a son. So the book is a kind of Telemacheia in that sense.

PCM: What feedback have you gotten from readers? You write very much about your own experience as a Japanese American, but so many people feel a resonance with your stories.

Hongo: I think people come through the different layers of hegemonic discourse and then they respond to the work because it allows them to come through those layers. Because what they are told about identity, ethnicity, even common humanity obstructs what they feel because it puts them in positions that in fact blind and silence them to their own emotional resonances with their own lives. Poetry, not just mine, but a lot of poetry gives them the opportunity to break through those things in a way that refreshes their own affections or what has been silenced in their own histories or microhistories. I think there is a kind of intuitive connection that they feel that emerges, and I’m grateful for that.

PCM: How do you feel your time at Pomona shaped your writing and who you are now?

Hongo: I write with fondness of my time at Pomona in several episodes of my book. The liberal arts education itself afforded me a different kind of consciousness with which to engage the world. A liberal arts education gives you more freedom, allows you to be more free, allows you to be more self-creative. We’re not looking to fit. We’re looking to create.