'Wild Wild Space' review: Solid HBO doc explores the business of rockets, where some soar, some crash

While the recently released and delightfully entertaining feature film “Fly Me to the Moon” is set against the backdrop of the Space Race of the 1960s, the HBO original documentary “Wild Wild Space” is all about the modern-day celestial competition among a handful of private companies who are engaged in a high-stakes competition to occupy Low Earth Orbit, as they blast satellite-carrying rockets into space. At times it’s a bit murky in presentation and we get bogged down in all the geek talk, but on balance, this is a timely and informative work.

Directed with a solid, no-frills, straightforward approach by Ross Kaufmann and inspired by the best-selling book “When the Heavens Went on Sale” by the terrific journalist Ashlee Vance (who appears in the film and offers valuable perspective), “Wild Wild Space” follows three rocket and satellite companies, all of which have names out of a futuristic movie: Astra Space, Rocket Lab and Planet Labs. (Elon Musk isn’t a participant in the documentary, but the presence of the dominant SpaceX looms large throughout.)

The doc starts with the dashing and cocky Chris Kemp, CEO of Astra Space, driving to company headquarters in Silicon Valley and saying, “I do need to warn you of something. I actually don’t have a valid driver’s license and the car’s not registered and they canceled my insurance. So this is a little risky.”

Throughout the triumphs and failures of Astra Space, Kemp remains ever the amiable but slick salesman and self-promoter, whereas Planet Labs co-founder and CEO Will Marshall (whom Kemp has known since college) comes across as a more self-effacing, “traditional” brilliant nerd, and Rocket Lab co-founder and CEO Peter Beck is arguably the most interesting of the bunch — a bushy-haired, free-spirited New Zealander (Will Ferrell could play him) with no formal education who taught himself how to create a rocket bike, a rocket-attached scooter and a jet pack before becoming an unlikely player in the big leagues, with Rocket Lab racking up an impressive record of some 47 launches, 43 of them being successful.

We go back to the early days of all three companies and follow them through the last decade, going behind the scenes as they engage in trial-and-error tests of satellite-carrying rockets, with some of the satellites as small as a loaf of bread. The race is all about controlling as much space turf as possible, as satellites can be used to predict yields on soy crops and copper mines, determine weather patterns, provide innovations in GPS and Internet delivery systems — but of course also can be used as a powerful tool in warfare. (It’s the classic double-edged sword of technology being used to help our world, but also exploited in the most destructive ways imaginable.) Operating in the shadow of SpaceX, these relatively small companies aim to make smaller rockets that will undercut SpaceX on price — and there aren’t a whole lot of laws governing their endeavors.

We see fantastic footage of Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck, wearing a lab coat because that’s what you do when you’re launching rockets, sharing a patch of land in New Zealand with a flock of sheep as they launch a rather dubious-looking but effective rocket in 2009, making Rocket Lab the first private business in the Southern Hemisphere to reach space and putting the company on the modern space-race map.

In present day, Astra’s Chris Kemp, who sometimes seems in over his head, puts a positive spin on high-profile setbacks, e.g., the explosion of Astra Rocket 2.0 in 2018, after which he is seen on the phone with an investor, saying, “Hey no worries, yeah. ... It was a really beautiful flight. ... We got about 30 seconds of flight ... night launches are always spectacular.”

Another major player in “Wild Wild Space” is astrophysicist Pete Worden, brigadier general, USAF retired, who was one of the chief architects of the Strategic Defense Initiative, aka the “Star Wars” program. In 2015, NASA gave Worden the Ames Research Center, which at the time was a place where ideas went to die, and he started working with young hotshots in various capacities. You’d think the old-school guy might be stodgy, but Worden proves to be a colorful character, at times dressing up in costumes (Darth Vader, goat herder, Cold War-era Russian general) and at one point signing off on a “space rave” party attended by 8,000 people at Ames.

At times, “Wild Wild Space” almost plays like an ultra-high-stakes episode of “Shark Tank,” with all these talented, ambitious, innovative and, yes, slightly crazy dreamers sending rockets into orbit — or in some cases, about 30 feet in the air before they come tumbling down. It’s a veritable traffic jam up there, with some 8,200 satellites currently orbiting Earth, and as many as 100,000 expected within 10 years. SpaceX’s Starlink constellation remains by far the greatest power in satellite internet technology, but there’s room in the space economy for other players, who continue to pursue their often improbable but not impossible dreams.