Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk
The original space race was between the United States and the Soviet Union but the space race of the future won't be between world superpowers instead two of the richest men in the world will be facing off Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are going head-to-head in a billionaire space race. Who will emerge victorious both musk and Bezos want humans to go back to the moon, but they also have ideas that are far grander Bezos Blue Origin wants to establish a true industrial base in space while musk's SpaceX aims to colonize Mars will musk or Bezos be the king of new space.
The next 40 to 50 years of space travel could be very exciting companies with billions of dollars of funding are looking to the stars many companies want to send travelers to space, but it's not just space tourism that will be a pivotal part of the billionaire space race both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos want to send astronauts back to the moon. The next step after that is Mars and then space colonization Bezos is pouring billions of money into his space exploration company Blue Origin and Elon Musk is making tremendous strides via his company's SpaceX. Musk wants to build a megacity on Mars and Bezos envisions a plethora of floating space colonies. This may all seem very sci-fi but musk and Bezos want it to become science fact they might just succeed thanks to their incredible wealth SpaceX has come a long way since Elon Musk founded the company all the way back in 2002. The company has grown into a multi-billion dollar enterprise and Elon Musk's net worth has skyrocketed as well today musk is worth about 88.7 billion dollars and SpaceX is one of the reasons why he's so rich SpaceX is just one of musk's many ventures, but it's possible the company could be far more valuable than The Boring Company or tesla in the future Morgan Stanley estimates that SpaceX is currently worth about 46 to 50 billion dollars, but the company could be worth as much as 200 billion dollars in the near future thanks to major projects like Starlink. Starlink which is SpaceX's 10 billion satellite internet constellations could make musk even richer than he is today. Numerous companies and private investors are flocking to SpaceX. SpaceX has signed lucrative contracts with both NASA and the US department of defense during a recent fundraising push SpaceX secured 1.9 billion dollars in additional investment which is one of the largest single fundraising pushes by any company in history musk and SpaceX have garnered 1.1 billion dollars worth of defense contracts from the US government since 2002 including a 149 million dollar contract to build missile tracking satellites for the military. SpaceX's recent successful Crew Dragon mission which marked the first time a private company sent astronauts into space wouldn't have been possible without a 3.1 billion dollar investment from NASA SpaceX is working closely with NASA to get astronauts back to the moon by 2024. NASA's 1 billion Artemis program is extremely ambitious NASA awarded SpaceX a 135 million dollar contract to help get astronauts on the moon again, but SpaceX isn't the only company partnering with NASA in the Artemis program Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin is working closely with NASA too Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world with a net worth of about 187.5 billion dollars but his company Blue Origin could one day be worth much more than that. Today Bezos is primarily focused on growing Amazon but that could all change as the billionaire space race heats up Bezos is putting a lot of his own money into Blue Origin, and he reportedly sells one billion dollars worth of Amazon stock every year to help fund Blue Origin.
Blue Origin was founded in 2000 and there are a few ways the company differs from musk's SpaceX Blue Origin is heavily involved in space tourism but that's not the main focus of SpaceX musk is the current CEO of SpaceX, but Bezos merely founded Blue Origin the companies do have much in common though they compete heavily for defense contracts and space exploration contracts like SpaceX Blue Origin has a lucrative contract with NASA SpaceX may be winning the space race but as far as the Artemis program goes Blue Origin has the edge. NASA awarded Blue Origin 579 million dollars to develop human lunar landers for the program's moon missions that's more money than SpaceX has received so far, but the program could cost as much as 18.4 billion dollars by 2024 so there is much more cash to hand out Blue Origin received 500 million dollars from the U.S. air force to develop the new Glenn rocket which was intended to be used for security missions.
However, the U.S. air force favored SpaceX and oola in the second phase of the military's national security space launch program which was a devastating blow to Bezos and another notch in the wind column for musk and SpaceX Blue Origin is rapidly expanding, so the battle isn't over, yet Blue Origin operates at 205 million 750 000 square foot manufacturing facility in Merritt Island Florida and the company recently unveiled a 200 million rocket engine factory in Huntsville Alabama dubbed rocket city earlier this year. Jeff Bezos may be far richer than musk but there is no question that SpaceX is beating Blue Origin in the billionaire space race however it's important to remember that the USSR beat the USA into space, and we all know how that turned out the yanks beat the soviets to the moon so don't count out Bezos just, yet he may be losing to musk right now but that could certainly change. The successful launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon space vehicle via the Falcon 9 rocket back in may put musk way ahead of Bezos SpaceX made headlines around the world when the Crew Dragon c206 endeavor spacecraft carried NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and bob bankin into orbit for a rendezvous with the International Space Station the manned mission marked the first time a crude orbital space flight was completed by a private company and the mission was the first time a crewed vehicle has flown from U.S. soil since NASA ended the space shuttle program in 2011. Blue Origin has yet to achieve anywhere near this level of success but there is hope on the horizon Blue Origin has launched the new Shepard rocket which is a vertical takeoff vertical landing spacecraft into space numerous times the rocket is crew rated and the eventual goal is to put humans on board Blue Origin believes only a few more test flights are needed before the goal is achieved. This is just the first phase of the billionaire space race musk and Bezos have very different long-term goals Jeff Bezos wants to have a fleet of floating space colonies while Elon Musk wants to build a megacity on the surface of Mars both these goals seem absolutely far-fetched but if the rate of innovation is accelerated then both these concepts could become reality Bezos version of space is heavily inspired by American physicist Gerald k o'Neal and his 1976 book “The high frontier” human colonies in space Bezos admits that the plan will take generations to achieve but his bold vision of a future in space could one day happen even if it takes hundreds of years. Bezos wants Blue Origin to build giant space colonies that could sustain millions of people he foresees a future whereas many as one trillion people live in millions of space colonies. Bezos says that each of these giant space stations could be vastly different some could be space hotels and others could be nature preserves some might be modeled after historic earth cities while others could be dedicated to farming these giant space colonies would be miles long and rotate to induce artificial gravity they would be so large that the International Space Station would look like a speck of dust in comparison of course it will take a lot of resources to operate these massive space colonies Bezos expects the resources like water and minerals could come from the moon or nearby asteroids. You might think that Bezos wants to abandon earth but that's not the case he believes that the earth could flourish and be overtaken by nature once most people move to these giant space colonies. Musk's goal of building a city on Mars seems much more feasible than Bezos's plan for space colonies. Musk believes a city could be built on Mars as early as the 2030s but there is still a lot of work to be done for that to become a reality before a city can be built on Mars we have to get there first musk has a detailed plan for sending people to Mars, and it all hinges on SpaceX's starship previously called the big falcon rocket SpaceX's starship is a fully reusable two-stage to orbit super heavy lift launch vehicle that SpaceX has been designing since 2012. Musk is 80 to 90 percent confident that starship will reach orbit next year, and he hopes to be able to transport cargo to Mars via starship as early as 2022. Summer 2022 would be an ideal launch window as Mars will be closer to earth during this period by 2024 musk wants to send SpaceX's starship to Mars with 100 tons of supplies as well as a group of people if all goes according to plan humans could set foot on Mars by 2025. However before any of this is possible the starship has to undergo rigorous test flights. Musk expects to lose a few ships and maybe some boosters in the process the entire endeavor will cost billions but no one ever said progress was cheap you might one day be able to set foot on Mars yourself, but musk says it will cost a lot he wants to send as many as one million people to Mars and tickets could cost as much as two hundred thousand dollars Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are the big names in the billionaire space race, but they're not the only ones with grand ambitions of space exploration and development. They may be the leaders, but the field is wide open and there is plenty of competition.
British billionaire Richard Branson is the brains behind Virgin Galactic and virgin orbit he's focusing on space tourism via low-cost small orbital launchers and intercontinental sub-orbital transit Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is heavily invested in the breakthrough star shot project which he founded with Mark Zuckerberg and the late Stephen Hawking the project aims to produce a fleet of light sail spacecrafts capable of interstellar flight. These spacecrafts will be known as space probes and the eventual goal of the breakthrough star shot project is to have the ships travel to Proxima Centaurib which is 4.2 light years from earth.
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