Elon Musk is standing in the way as Jeff Bezos reaches for orbit
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Jeff Bezos’ private space company Blue Origin’s first attempt to launch a rocket into orbit will be a milestone for the space business.After receiving the go-ahead from US regulators last week, the Amazon founder is finally close to Elon Musk’s humanity. In providing a way to escape the country’s borders, a once-unthinkable achievement for a single, wealthy individual.
Despite Musk’s predecessor SpaceX for two years Blue origin The successful launch of its orbital rocket, called New Glenn, will finally move it beyond its current limited business of ferrying passengers to the edges of space, pitting the world’s two richest people against each other in an intensifying private space race.
But Blue Origin’s late appearance comes as the rocket business enters a new phase that will likely be more hostile to Bezos’ ambitions than if he had launched into orbit years ago. Bezos’ potential breakthrough comes as his nemesis has achieved unprecedented political ascendancy in Washington are how his newfound influence can be used against them.
For his part, Bezos has already struggled to contain SpaceX politically, after losing a bid to build a lunar lander for NASA, warning that the number of contracts awarded to SpaceX by Washington could turn it into a monopoly these days under any official suspicion of authority seems less likely.
Musk’s influence could also be key to shaping space policy in Trump’s second term, which could include giving SpaceX a more central role in US plans to return to the moon, something that currently depends heavily on the $30 billion Boeing-led SLS rocket. project: So far, the SLS has had just one flight all the characteristics of a white elephantmaking it just a government scam that Musk’s new “Department of Government Efficiency” is out to kill.
Meanwhile, thanks to Musk, the economics of the rocket business are moving relentlessly against newcomers like Bezos. which is three times the power of New Glenn.
SpaceX has pulled off an eye-catching feat by returning a rocket booster to its launch pad, where it was cradled by a pair of giant mechanical arms, a step toward making Starship the first fully reusable rocket that can be recharged and put back into service on its last mission. within a few hours of the flight.
Most space analysts expect it will eventually incur the cost of transporting the payload into space Well below $1,000 per kilogram, and perhaps below $500. That compares to the lowest price of $6,000 per kilogram that SpaceX is currently advertising. Even without Starship, SpaceX has been steadily reducing its costs launch volume. Last year it launched nearly three rockets a week and accounted for more than half of the world’s orbital launches. That’s fast was an escalation from just 33 launches three years ago, and a frequency that would take Blue Origin years to reach.
However, despite the fact that it has yet to be filled, Bezos’ rocket company will have no shortage of customers.Demand for space launches is expected to greatly outpace supply for the rest of this decade as the US military looks to find a reliable alternative to SpaceX. And the race to build constellations of communications satellites to rival SpaceX’s Starlink is entering a new phase, with Amazon’s Project Kuiper.
For Washington, depending on two billionaires for access to space may seem slightly better than depending on one. But there seems to be no going back to the old model of space development, where the government took over all the management and risk estimated that the $400 million SpaceX spent developing its Falcon rocket was a tenth of what it would cost in the public sector.
The trick for governments now will be to find new ways to exercise control. That will likely include new programs like SpaceX’s Starshield, a military-grade version of its Starlink network. For better or worse, getting the very rich into orbit looks like business.
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