Writer, journalist

Test GodS

COMING MAY 4, 2021

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Informed by more than four years of embedded inside reporting, Test Gods is the true, never-before-told story of Virgin Galactic's campaign to build a space tourism company – an epic tale of bravery and sacrifice, brotherhood, and the thin line between lunacy and genius.

“A split second into the mission Mark Stucky knew something was horribly wrong. Pushing the stick forward, he had expected to enter an aggressive dive, like a kamikaze bomber racing at its target— in this case the bleak California desert. But now the tail of his spaceship was stalled and beginning to drift, contorting his carefully calibrated dive into an unintended back flop.”

“A kick-ass adventure story of the last of the great swashbucklers addicted to speed and altitude. What makes a man routinely risk his life for a living umpteen miles above the clouds? What does he leave behind on earth? Cosmic questions that Schmidle answers with elegance and beauty and pace. Just strap yourself in and get ready for one helluva ride.”

— Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights

“If you want to know what being a test pilot truly looks and feels and even smells like, read this riveting book. Schmidle has done something remarkable, capturing all the visceral grit we experience inside the cockpit, in addition to all the tragedies and triumphs that we encounter along the way. This is the book about the New Space Race you’ve been waiting to read. An instant classic.”

— Scott Kelly, astronaut and New York Times bestselling author of Endurance: My Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery

Jacket Photograph by Jason DiVenere — **Jacket Photograph** by Jason DiVenere

“A feverish, true-life thriller that burns with emotional energy.”

— Martha Raddatz, co-anchor of ABC’s “This Week” and New York Times bestselling author of The Long Road Home

“A hurtling narrative about the test pilots of the Virgin Galactic space program, Test Gods is a hugely ambitious feat of reporting and storytelling, and a fitting twenty-first century sequel to The Right Stuff. Schmidle captures not just the technical wizardry of the spaceships and the envelope-pushing prowess of the pilots, but also the very real costs, for the pilots and their families, of reaching for something beyond this world.”

— Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Say Nothing

PREORDER

ABOUT

Nicholas Schmidle

Photograph by Rikki Schmidle — **Photograph** by Rikki Schmidle

Nicholas Schmidle writes for the New Yorker and is the author of To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan. His work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, and many others.

Schmidle has been a National Magazine Award finalist, a two-time Livingston Award finalist, and winner of a Kurt Schork Award. He is a former fellow at the Institute of Current World Affairs, the New America Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and resident at the Rockefeller’s Foundation’s Bellagio Center. In 2017, Schmidle was a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.

He currently lives in London with his family.