Space race, 21st-century edition
The well-known 20th-century space race was a competition between two cold war giants fighting for space supremacy. In a few decades, huge technological advancements have been achieved but since then we haven’t stepped on moons surface a single time. Nowadays, investments in government space agencies being kept low because there is little incentive to conquer space. Private aerospace manufacturers, however, have other motivations to utilize space.

Commercializing the space industry and the big goal of colonizing extraterritorial objects or space is what private companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin want to achieve.
SpaceX and Blue Origin
Among many smaller aerospace companies, two have grabbed the spotlight being the most ambitious of them all: SpaceX and Blue Origin share some interesting history yet their goals for the future differ.
SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a well-known pioneer of the 21st century. Musk founded SpaceX under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars.
“I’ve said I want to die on Mars, just not on impact.” — Elon Musk, during a SXSW interview, reported in Vanity Fair
Blue Origin is like SpaceX an aerospace manufacturer and was founded in 2000 by Amazon chief Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin is 100% privately funded by Bezos. According to the New York Times, he sells $1 billion of his Amazon stock each year to finance Blue Origin.
Like SpaceX, Blue Origin wants to develop technologies to enable human access to space at a dramatically lower cost and increased reliability. They differ, however, in their long-term goals: Bezos doesn’t think humanity should abandon Earth to go looking for a better home. He wants to preserve Earth, by getting heavy industry and power generation off Earth. His dream is seeing millions of people living and working in space colonies like the one illustrated.
Their visions are quite different, but both believe that driving down the cost of space access with reusable rockets is the key to achieve them.
Who’s ahead of the game
Bezos and Musk keep saying that this isn’t a race into space, rather healthy market competition. Internal perception, however, suggests something different. As competing manufacturers, both companies have been fighting over multiple things, like potential launch sites or government contracts. Musk and Bezos keep throwing down on Twitter on who won what or commenting on each other projects.
Looking at the numbers, SpaceX is clearly ahead of the space race. During the past years, the company managed to get many contracts and made important improvements in their rocket-tech. In turn, SpaceX became one of the most active rocket launch companies worldwide. They also created the first reusable rocket, the Falcon 9.
Elon Musk is also making huge progress in reaching his ambitious goal of colonizing Mars. The first prototype of the Starship (The vehicle that will carry humans from Earth to Mars) has already been introduced and first tests follow soon.
Blue Origin, by contrast, hasn’t made such big progress in the launching industry. Basically, Blue Origin still has zero true-orbital flight experience. Instead, the company is currently focusing to make space tourism a real thing (sub-orbital flight). The timing of the first tourist flight is unclear, but Bezos says it could happen by 2020. Their mid-term goal is to establish the first brick of their future lunar base, called Blue Moon.
Comparing Blue Origin and SpaceX just by the numbers is difficult because both are operating in different segments of their industry. If Blue Origin could manage to commercialize space tourism, they obviously can make big money. Blue Origin, nonetheless, has very little flight experience and will need quite some time to get the assurance that SpaceX already has. SpaceX has also achieved a rather steady income, while Blue Origin is by most part financed by Bezos.
In the end, I still think the success of either of the companies is a question about leadership. Musk and Bezos presumably are great pioneers of the 21st century and their influence on SpaceX and Blue Origin is substantial. Both keep saying that their space company is the most important thing that they’re working on.
