Elon Musk vs Jeff Bezos: who will win the billionaire space race? SpaceX and Blue Origin are fighting to fly to the moon – is Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic a contender?

May 15 , 2021

Elon Musk of SpaceX, Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin and Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic – who is winning the private space exploration game? Photo: TNS, Slow Life Symposium

SpaceX will help Nasa put the first astronauts on the Moon since 1972, and is building the Starlink network of satellites and giant Starships to reach Mars

Bezos is using money from Amazon to build the New Shepard rocket to take tourists to the edge of space, then bigger New Glenn and New Armstrong rockets

Elon Musk’s SpaceX may be the buzziest name in private space exploration, but the Tesla CEO isn’t the only mega-rich entrepreneur with grand visions for humanity’s future beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

Amazon founder and fellow centi-billionaire Jeff Bezos has his own space company, Blue Origin, and he sells around US$1 billion worth of Amazon stock each year to fund it. Richard Branson, a colourful Englishman whose Virgin Group dabbles in everything from airlines to health care, launched a commercial space flight company of his own called Virgin Galactic.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announces Blue Moon, a lunar landing vehicle for the moon, during a Blue Origin event in Washington DC in February 2021. Photo: AFP

These three companies were all founded within a few years of one another in the early 2000s, but each has its own business model and plans for a spacefaring future.

Here’s what Musk, Bezos and Branson are trying to accomplish, and where their efforts stand today.

Elon Musk

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, years before becoming Tesla’s outspoken CEO and cementing himself as a regular fixture in the Twittersphere.

The company grew out of an idea Musk had to send a spacecraft called the “Mars Oasis” to the red planet. The vehicle would deliver an experimental greenhouse and equipment for taking photos of the planet and sending them back to Earth. Musk hoped the project would spark a renewed interest in getting to Mars within the US government.