This looks like an interesting book--how to think like a rocket scientist.

That's just pathetic on so many different levels.

I presume the chapter on "Optimise" covers incorporating factors for politics and PR in the trade space.

The book looks to me like good reading if you want to know how rocket scientists think. As "K" pointed out, scientists typically optimize for one thing, such as the author's land speed record example, and leave out other factors such as politics and PR. This is fine for a science project. However, it's bad or fatal for a rocket engineer whose job is to get the rocket working, safe, reliable, useful, and cost competitive. If you are doing rocket hardware development, you *can't* optimize for just one thing (e.g. performance). The difference is well illustrated in the movie "Back to School" wherein the college professor lectures on how to plan a building project, and the middle age successful businessman student (Rodney Dangerfield) points out that you have to factor in more money to cover the various forms of graft.

The part on potmaking seems to have an interesting parallel to (and lesson for) Shuttle-type projects, vs. a multitude of smaller x-vehicle programs...

Think like a rocket scientist while doing your grocery shopping - instead of asking whether you should buy any frozen convenience foods, ask whether you would get a higher specific impulse from cryogenic fuel. Just don't think like a NASA rocket scientist, as then you'll have to design a new shopping cart every time you visit the store.