Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is set to launch its new space rocket on Monday, a development that could add more fuel to the billionaires’ space race.
The New Glenn rocket is set to lift off from Cape Canaveral — the result of a multibillion-dollar, decade-long effort that could pave the way for Amazon’s satellite constellation project and eat into Elon Musk’s market share.
Mr. Musk’s EspaceX has dominated the scene for many years, but both Mr. Bezos and founder of Virgin Galactic Mr. Richard Branson have projects on space… and on the wealth linked to its exploration.
Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin
“Since I was five years old, I have dreamed of traveling to space,” Mr. Bezos said ahead of his trip to the edge of space in 2021.
He founded the company Blue Origin with the goal of getting “millions of people working and living in space.”
For years, it launched – and landed – its reusable New Shepard rocket to and from the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, but never sent anything into orbit. Everything could change on Monday.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin and Amazon. Photo: Reuters
Blue Origin hopes its New Glenn rocket can compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the world’s most active rocket.
Compared to Mr. Musk’s Falcon 9, the New Glenn is about twice as powerful and has twice the diameter of its cargo bay to accommodate larger batches of satellites.
The upcoming launch is also a key certification flight required by the U.S. Space Force before New Glenn can launch national security payloads as part of the multibillion-dollar government tenders that Blue Origin hopes to win.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off in October 2024. Photo: Reuters
Elon Musk and SpaceX
“I want to die on Mars, but not from impact,” Elon Musk once joked.
The Donald Trump ally, who is frequently photographed wearing an “Occupy Mars” shirt, enjoys relative dominance of the private space industry through his company SpaceX.
In 2016, Mr. Musk outlined his vision for build a colony on Mars “in our lifetime” – with the first rocket propelling humans to the red planet by 2025, although this deadline does not appear to be met.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump speak at a SpaceX launch in 2020. Photo: Reuters
For many years, the company used an image of the Martian surface being terraformed (becoming Earth-like) in its promotional materials. However, a NASA-sponsored study published in 2018 dismissed these projects as impossible with the technology available at the time.
SpaceX missions included both contracts with the U.S. government and the launch of the company’s Starlink satellite internet network.
And although Mr. Bezos’s New Glenn rocket is far more powerful than the successful Falcon 9, SpaceX’s next-generation Starship, a fully reusable rocket system currently in development, would be even more powerful.
Mr. Musk sees Starship as crucial to expanding Starlink’s footprint in orbit. Its next test flight is expected later this month and will involve the deployment of fake satellites.
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Mr. Richard Branson. Photo: Reuters
Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic
Also looking to invest in the upper atmosphere is Virgin founder Sir Richard, whose Virgin Galactic efforts have taken its first tourists to the edge of space in 2023.
The crew took the passengers approximately 88 km above Earth, where they experienced weightlessness during the flight which lasted just over an hour.
“My mother taught me to never give up and to aim for the stars,” the British billionaire once said.
The company is currently taking a break from flights to develop new space vehicles, Forbes reported in October last year.
Its new fleet of Delta vehicles is expected to resume commercial spaceflight by 2026.
