For others who are more curious about Sid Meier's life in game design and development, the appropriately titled "Sid Meir's Memoir" (https://sidmeiersmemoir.com/) was an OK read that goes through everything from the founding of MicroProse, selling it to Atari, to founding Firaxis and a lot in-between.
I was disappointed that the book didn't have much to say about Alpha Centauri. I wish he would do a GDC postmortem for Alpha Centauri like he did for Civ 1.
I think in general the book isn't so much focus on the game design itself, sadly, but a lot of stuff around it.
However, is the whole "Back to the future" chapter basically about Alpha Centauri? Some time ago I read the book, but seems to be mentioned a bunch there: https://imgur.com/a/6d0U6oH