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Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the richest people on the planet, have been developing private space companies for many years. The stated goals are to reduce the cost of developing space equipment, make flights more accessible and colonize Mars.
At the end of September 2021, Elon Musk, entrepreneur and head of space company SpaceX, accused Jeff Bezos, the billionaire former head of Amazon and founder of Blue Origin, another space exploration company, of using the US judicial system to slow down the development of SpaceX.
“You can’t make your way to the moon with ships, no matter how good your lawyers are,” Elon Musk said at CodeCon 2021.
Trends figured out how Blue Origin and SpaceX differ, why the companies are subject to public criticism and how the two billionaires compete with each other.
Make space more accessible
SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, a former shareholder of PayPal and CEO of electric vehicle company Tesla.
The main goal of SpaceX is to reduce the cost of space flights and the colonization of Mars. To date, the company has developed the reusable Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, as well as the Dragon spacecraft (the second version of this ship made a tourist flight with civilians on September 16, 2021).
Musk’s achievements include launching launch vehicles into Earth orbit, docking ships to the ISS, and numerous successful launches and landings of used launch vehicle stages.
There have also been failed attempts to buy ballistic missiles, explosions of Falcon 1 missiles during launches, and unsuccessful attempts to land missiles on offshore platforms.
In addition, SpaceX is developing a separate area – Starlink satellites. The idea is to envelop the Earth with a network of telecom satellites in low Earth orbit, thanks to which humanity will have access to high-speed Internet. including in remote areas.
Blue Origin was created by Jeff Bezos a few years earlier, in 2000.
The goal of Blue Origin is similar: to make space more accessible and space technology more reliable. At the moment, Blue Origin has only two prototypes and several prototypes:
- The New Shepard is a six-seat suborbital spacecraft with its first manned launch on July 20, 2021.
- New Glenn is a heavy orbital launch vehicle.
- Blue Moon is a prototype moon landing module.
Despite 16 successful suborbital flights, only one of them took place with people on board. The launch of the heavy rocket New Glenn is constantly postponed, putting off the prospect of flying into orbit. New Glenn is expected to launch in late 2022.
Flying no further than orbit
The main difference between the two private companies created by billionaires is the flight range of the ships they produce.
Blue Origin offers suborbital flights, which are not fast enough to enter orbit. For example, the suborbital flight of Jeff Bezos and other participants passed at an altitude of just over 100 km above the Earth, while the altitude of low Earth orbit is 240 km.
In order to enter low Earth orbit, you need to reach the first escape velocity, which is 7,91 km / s. The ship must rise to a height and “break” through the atmosphere.
Suborbital flights are also offered by British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. In July 2021, he flew on a Unity rocket plane, reaching the so-called “frontier of space”, where the curvature of the Earth’s horizon is already noticeable.
SpaceX Elon Musk makes orbital flights. The last mission took place on September 16, 2021. The Crew Dragon spacecraft with civilians on board was launched from the spaceport at Cape Canaveral (Florida). After separation from the second stage of the launch vehicle and the inclusion of two of its own engines, Crew Dragon was launched into orbit at a height of 585 km. Three days later, the ship landed on the water off the coast of Florida in the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, the launch of Crew Dragon was the first flight into space exclusively with civilians on board.
Astronaut or just a tourist?
According to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), space flight is considered to be at a distance of at least 80 km from the Earth’s surface. Formally, both Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson should receive the title of astronaut, but according to the revised rules of the FAA, the applicant for this title must “make a significant contribution to the safety of the flight.” What constitutes a significant contribution is not specified.
So far, neither Bezos nor Branson have received the honorary astronaut wings badge that NASA gives to space flight participants. Perhaps, for those people who make suborbital flights for money, they will come up with a special “space tourist” badge.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX: “It’s cool that they [Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson] are spending money on space development, but suborbital flights are just a step towards orbit.”
Although the suborbital flights of Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson can only technically be called “flight into space”, such manned expeditions are important for the study of space and space physics.
hate wave
Despite the importance of private space flights for science, many perceive them only as a toy for the rich.
The cost of a single seat on Blue Origin’s New Shepard was $28 million. According to a NASA report, the price of a flight on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is even more expensive – about $55 million per seat.
A flight on the suborbital ship of the Virgin Galactic company, billionaire Richard Branson, would have recently cost $250, but after a successful flight in July 2021, the price increased to $450 per seat.
Not all participants pay for the flight out of their own money. Some of them, for example, just win. So, a participant in the flight on the ship Crew Dragon was 51-year-old Siana Proctor, a geologist, chosen because of a post on Twitter, where she explained why she should fly into space. The Crew Dragon mission itself was funded by Jared Isaacman, an entrepreneur and billionaire.
To date, space flights are still inaccessible to the vast majority of people, and the situation is unlikely to change in the coming years.
Due to the high cost of flights, both Musk and Bezos are criticized. Jeff Bezos spent about $5 billion in four minutes of weightlessness during a suborbital flight, according to reports.
The Global Citizen movement calculated that this money could save 37,5 million people from hunger or fully fund access to vaccines for 2 billion people from third world countries.
There is also criticism that tech tycoons are spending billions on spaceflight while avoiding paying taxes.
Pro Publica, an investigative journalism magazine, reported in June 2021 that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid no income tax at all in 2007 and 2011, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk in 2018. In other years, America’s richest people paid taxes at an average rate of 15,8%, less than most Americans.
Elizabeth Warren, the 2020 US presidential candidate of the left wing of the Democratic Party, publicly criticized the founder of Blue Origin: “Jeff Bezos makes nice flights into space while he and other billionaires beat the tax system and pay almost no taxes.”
Judicial activity
The reason Musk spoke out about Bezos at the end of September is because of a contract to build a manned lunar lander. According to the agreement signed in April 2021, the ship for NASA will be built by SpaceX. The estimated cost of the ship is $ 2,9 billion. Previously, it was assumed that SpaceX and Blue Origin would participate in the project together, so that NASA would eventually choose the best of the two competing ships and have a backup option. According to Cathy Lueders, the head of the manned flight program, the agency abandoned this option for reasons of economy, since Congress funded only a quarter of what NASA requested for the program.
Blue Origin first complained to the US Accounts Chamber, but in July it sided with NASA. Blue Origin then sued NASA as well. In response to Musk’s comments at CodeCon in September, Jeff Bezos sent The Verge a 13-page PDF file listing SpaceX’s lawsuits and petitions, the company’s lawsuit stated. to the US government, hinting that not only Blue Origin uses the judicial system to get the right decision from the state.
The rivalry between Musk and Bezos manifests itself in other things as well – all of 2021 they compete for the title of the richest person. On January 7, 2021, Musk overtook Bezos and became the richest man on the planet, then Jeff Bezos again took first place. On October 3, 2021, Musk’s fortune exceeded $ 200 billion, again making the head of SpaceX the richest man on Earth. Once again ahead of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk told Forbes: “I sent Jeffrey B. a giant statue of the number 2 along with a silver medal.”