The Billionaires’ Vision For A Newspace: Space Race 2.0
An increasing number of entrepreneurs are joining in the race to create cheap and commercialized space travel, in the new trend that’s being dubbed as “Newspace”.
Until the last decade, space explorations were being carried out exclusively by government organisations. The space race between the USA and the Soviet Union started the pursuit to satisfy our endless curiosity. They sent probes and manned missions to the moon and outer space when countries like India and China were just beginning to take baby steps towards the vast expanse that is space. The USSR was the first to send a manned crew to space, and thus Yuri Gagarin became the first man to have flown in outer space. The USA retaliated with the famous Apollo missions and in 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon.
But all of that is history. The 21st century witnessed the beginning of another rivalry between billionaires who wanted to leave their own mark in the space industry. This includes PayPal co-founder and CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, behind SpaceX, Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos with his dream company Blue Origin, Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group and his spaceflight company Virgin Galactic, and then some. Of these, two companies have grabbed the spotlight, emerging as the most ambitious of them all.
Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the objective of colonizing Mars and establishing a self-sustainable city which can be further used as a base to explore the solar system. Within 7 years since its establishment, SpaceX developed Falcon launch vehicles and Dragon multipurpose spacecraft and succeeded in putting a satellite into Earth’s orbit, becoming the first private company to do the same. SpaceX created history yet again on March 2, as an unmanned Dragon autonomously docked with the ISS and returned to Earth safely.
“We are going to build a road to space, and then amazing things will happen.” - Jeff Bezos
Blue Origin is a suborbital spaceflight services company founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000 with a vision of building infrastructure for humans to live in space. The multi-billionaire dreams of a trillion humans living off self-sustainable colonies in space. Blue Origin developed the famous New Shepard, a reusable Vertical-Takeoff, Vertical-Landing (VTVL) crewed rocket which is used for suborbital flights. They also unveiled a moon lander, “Blue Moon” in May ’19, which can take scientific payloads and eventually humans into the moon.
Jeff Bezos believes that in a couple of years, life on Earth will become static, with energy consumption being one of the many problems that will challenge life in the coming years. This energy crisis can lead humanity astray unless we find a way to tackle this issue head-on. And for the multimillionaire, a trillion humans moving out into the solar system is the best way forward, where there is unlimited access to solar power and other resources to ensure that earth stays a beautiful and rich planet forever.
There have been numerous instances where Blue Origin and SpaceX have been at war with each other. SpaceX and Blue Origin battled for leasing SLC39A, the launchpad that NASA used for the Apollo missions. SpaceX won the lease in 2013 and Blue Origin filed a lawsuit against them. Blue Origin leased the SLC36, which was earlier used for Atlas launches instead. Later, SpaceX filed a lawsuit against Blue Origin for patenting the landing of rockets on ships in the sea. SpaceX won the suit and even succeeded in landing rockets in the sea even before Blue Origin could build a landing platform.
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have feuded for nearly a decade over their activities, ambitions and rocket designs. They constantly criticise each other during the unveiling of new technologies and presentations. This battle involves legal advisories, government agencies and is broadcasted through press interviews and Twitter battles. Their press releases clash with each other, always in a constant effort to belittle the other’s accomplishments.
But even with this apparent rivalry, the visions of both the companies are more similar than one can possibly imagine. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin’s goal is to usher in an era of reusable rockets, which can cut down the manufacturing cost by 100 times. This can make space travel cheaper and more accessible to the public. This, in turn, is paving the way for an exciting future for a spacefaring multi-planetary race. Humanity can expand to space and grow exponentially, or in the words of Jeff Bezos, “a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts”. Both Bezos and Musk have a dream of enabling the expansion of humanity beyond Earth, even though they have completely different opinions about where we should be going.
SpaceX and Blue Origin are two sides of the same coin, even though their approaches towards space and the future of humanity have been markedly different and their owners occasionally spar about the details. But as in the past with the USA and USSR, the men and the companies involved will likely rise above their disputes and continue to support their causes and dreams in harmony. It’s not impossible that the two giants will one day work together in space for the betterment of life and humankind.
