The billionaire space race[2][3][4] is the intense rivalry in NewSpace by entrepreneurs who have entered the space industry from other industries - particularly computing.[5][6] This private industry space race of the 21st century involves sending rockets to the ionosphere (mesosphere and thermosphere), orbital launch rockets, and suborbital tourist spaceflights.[7]
Amongst the billionaires entering into NewSpace are:
- South-African-Canadian-American billionaire Elon Musk,[3] behind SpaceX and a project to colonize Mars.[4][1]
- American billionaire Jeff Bezos, behind Blue Origin and establishing a true industrial base in space.[4][2][1]
- British billionaire Richard Branson,[3] behind Virgin Galactic/Virgin Orbit and space tourism, low-cost small orbital launchers, and intercontinental suborbital transit.[4][2][1]
- Russian-Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner, backing the Breakthrough Starshot project for an interstellar probe.[5]
Background[edit]
The groundwork for the billionaire space race and NewSpace was arguably laid by Peter Diamandis, an American entrepreneur. In the 1980s, he founded an American national student space society, the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS). Later, Jeff Bezos became a chapter president of SEDS. In the 1990s, Diamandis, disappointed with the state of space development, decided to spur it on and spark the suborbital space tourism market, by initiating a prize, the X Prize. This led to Paul Allen becoming involved in the competition, creating the Scaled Composites Tier One platform of SpaceShipOne and White Knight One which won the Ansari X-Prize in the 2000s. The technology of the winning entrant was then licensed by Richard Branson's Virgin Group as a basis to found Virgin Galactic. The base techniques of Tier One also form the basis for Stratolaunch Systems of Vulcan Aerospace.[8][7] The billionaire space race shows the aims of billionaires extend beyond just fulfilling government contracts, with their own gilding of the space age, in extending capabilities and their own luster. Elon Musk has expressed excitement for a new space race.[9]
Rivalries[edit]
SpaceX vs Blue Origin[edit]
SpaceX and Blue Origin have had a long history of conflict.[4][6] Blue Origin and SpaceX have had dueling press releases that compete with each other's announcements and events.[10][11]
SpaceX and Blue Origin battled for the right to lease LC-39A, the rocket launch platform that was used to launch the Apollo moon missions. SpaceX won the lease in 2013, but Blue Origin filed suit in court against that. It is currently in the hands of SpaceX, while Blue Origin rented SLC-36 instead.[6]
SpaceX filed suit against Blue Origin to invalidate their patent on landing rockets aboard ships at sea. They won their court fight in 2014. SpaceX had been attempting to land rockets at sea since 2014, finally succeeding in 2016, before Blue Origin ever even built a sea-going platform to land rockets onto.[6]
SpaceX and Blue Origin got into a Twitter battle about the meaning of a used rocket, landed rocket, spacerocket, at the end of 2015, when New Shepard successfully landed, after a suborbital jaunt into space. SpaceX had previously launched and landed its Grasshopper rocket multiple times without reaching space. Then SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 first stage, which had been used to launch a satellite into orbit, prompting more Twitter battles at the start of 2016.[6]
In late 2016, Blue Origin announced the New Glenn, directly competing against SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, with a larger rocket but lower payload.[12]
At the 2016 International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson elaborated on the Bezos vision previously outlined in the New Glenn announcement. The Blue Origin New Armstrong would be similar in function to the SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System that Elon Musk unveiled at the same conference.[13]
In April of 2021, SpaceX beat Blue Origin to a 2.9 billion dollar contract to build the lunar lander for NASA's Artemis program.[14]
Blue Origin vs Virgin Galactic[edit]
Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are in the same market, suborbital space tourism, with New Shepard and SpaceShipTwo (Tier 1b), respectively. They are in a race to be first to launch paying customers on short spaceshots, with rival technological philosophies of space capsules and spaceplanes, respectively.[15][16][2][1]
Private vs Public Companies[edit]
SpaceX and Blue Origin are privately held while Virgin Galactic is publicly traded under the ticker SPCE. Retail investors have complained that the potentially lucrative space market is largely only open to the ultra rich with relatively few companies currently trading publicly. Virgin Orbit is also considering a public listing via SPAC reverse merger.[17]
With its status as a public company, Virgin Galactic has gained a considerable following on popular online forum Reddit and more specifically on the subreddit of Wall Street Bets.[18] Many retail traders are hoping to achieve a short squeeze similar to that experienced by Gamestop's shares in January and AMC's share in June of 2021.
See also[edit]
- Cold War Space Race; between the US and U.S.S.R.; leading to the Race to the Moon
- Asian space race; between China, India, and Japan for space prestige
- Space launch market competition
- Commercialization of space
- Mars race
Further reading[edit]
- Christian Davenport (2018). The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1610398299.
- Tim Fernholz (2018). Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the New Space Race. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-1328662231.
- Julian Guthrie (2016). How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1594206726.
- Ashlee Vance (2015). Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Ecco. ISBN 978-0062301239.