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The taxpayer-funded space race between billionaire tech moguls Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos has moved to satellite internet services today.
Bezos’ company, Amazon, has launched its first experimental satellites Proposed internet service Friday is the company’s first steps in its plan to compete SpaceX broadband Starlink network.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifted off with a pair of test satellites, kicking off a program that describes its goals of achieving global Internet coverage with eventually 3,236 satellites orbiting Earth.
Amazon said it plans to start offering the service by the end of 2024.
However, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has a strong head start over Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos, who owns his own rocket company, Blue Origin.
SpaceX launched the first experimental Starlink satellites in 2018 and the first operational satellites in 2019. It has since launched more than 5,000 Starlinks from Florida and California, using its Falcon rockets.
Europe Eutelsat OneWeb It also launches Internet satellites, about 600 of which are now in orbit.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying two prototype Amazon relay stations for a space Internet service called Project Kuiper, lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, October 6, 2023.
Musk described the Amazon founder as an “amateur” when it comes to space exploration, while Bezos responded by saying Musk’s employees believed he “rarely knew as much as he claimed.”
The competition between Musk and Bezos has become known as the “billionaire space race” — according to Musk biographer Walter Isaacson — because space is a “passion” for both men: nerds who grew up immersed in science fiction.
The two billionaires reignited their feud by trading insults in Isaacson’s biography of the SpaceX founder, which was published last month.
Musk described the Amazon founder as an “amateur” when it comes to space exploration because he did not spend enough time at his company Blue Origin.
But Bezos responded, saying Musk’s employees believed he “rarely knew as much as he claimed,” according to Isaacson’s report.
Former Tesla and SpaceX employees said they believed Musk’s ideas were “usually unhelpful or problematic,” as the book claims.
Their space feud isn’t new: Musk and Bezos have been fighting over control of space tourism and contracting with NASA for two decades.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and Amazon’s Project Kuiper Protoflight mission are located on NASA’s Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) pad at Cape Canaveral.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin officially secured a $3.4 billion contract with NASA earlier this year, bringing the billionaire one small step closer to putting a man on the moon. In 2021, Musk’s SpaceX company won $3 billion to help return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. Bezos tried in vain to win that contract, then tried to file a lawsuit to overturn the decision.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin officially secured a $3.4 billion contract with NASA last May, bringing the billionaire one small step closer to putting a man on the moon.
In 2021, Musk’s SpaceX company won $3 billion to help return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. Bezos tried in vain to win that contract, then launched an unsuccessful lawsuit to overturn the decision.
With today’s launch, Amazon originally agreed to place the two test satellites on the first launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket.
But with Vulcan grounded due to problems until at least the end of this year, Amazon has turned to the well-established Atlas V system.
When licensing the program, the FCC stipulated that at least half of the planned satellites be operational by 2026 and all of them by 2029.
Amazon has booked 77 launches from Europe’s ULA, Blue Origin and Arianespace to get thousands of proposed satellites into orbit.
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