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Jeff Bezos in front of Blue Origin’s space capsule
Jeff Bezos, Sir Richard Branson and Elon Musk, dubbed the “NewSpace” set, all say they were inspired by the first moon landing in 1969, when the US beat the Soviet Union in the space race. mean for each of them to win the ‘new space race’.
Amazon founder Bezos appeared to be the first of three to fly to space after announcing plans to launch on July 20 aboard his aerospace company Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft, but Branson beat him to it.
The British billionaire became Virgin Galactic Astronaut 001 when he reached space on a suborbital flight nine days before Bezos — on July 11 on a test flight.
Bezos traveled into space on July 20 with his younger brother Mark, Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old physics student whose father bought his ticket, and pioneering female astronaut Wally Funk, 82.
While Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla, has said he wants to go into space and even “die on Mars,” he hasn’t said when he might blast into orbit — but bought a ticket from Virgin Galactic for a suborbital flight.
SpaceX became the first of the “space tourism” operators to send an all-civil crew into orbit, with the Inspiration4 mission funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman.
His flight was on a Dragon capsule and a SpaceX rocket built by space-obsessed billionaire Elon Musk and took off Sept. 16 for the three-day orbital journey — higher than the International Space Station.
SpaceX looks to be leading the way in the broader billionaire space race with numerous launches bringing NASA equipment to the ISS and partnerships to send tourists into space by 2021.
On February 6, 2018, SpaceX sent a rocket to the orbit of Mars, 140 million miles away, with Musk’s own red Tesla roadster attached.
Elon Musk with his Dragon Crew capsule
SpaceX also sent two groups of astronauts to the | International Space Station, with crew from NASA, ESA and JAXA, the Japanese space agency.
SpaceX has sent batches of 60 satellites into space to form its Starlink network, which is already in beta and delivers high-speed internet to rural areas.
Branson and Virgin Galactic take a different approach to conquering space. It has repeatedly and successfully conducted test flights of Virgin Galactic’s Unity spaceplane.
The first occurred in December 2018 and the last on May 22, with the flight accelerating to over 2,000 miles per hour (Mach 2.7).
More than 600 wealthy customers to date, including celebrities Brad Pitt and Katy Perry, have reserved a $250,000 (£200,000) seat on one of Virgin’s space trips. Final tickets are expected to cost $350,000.
Branson has previously said he expects Elon Musk to win the race to Mars with his private rocket company SpaceX.
Richard Branson with the Virgin Galactic craft
SpaceShipTwo can carry six passengers and two pilots. Each passenger gets the same seating position with two large windows – one on the side and one overhead.
The spacecraft is 60 feet long and has a 90-inch diameter cabin, which allows the astronauts to float in zero gravity at maximum.
It climbs to 50,000 feet before the rocket motor ignites. SpaceShipTwo separates from its aircraft carrier, White Knight II, once it crosses the 50-mile mark.
Passengers become “astronauts” when they reach the Karman line, the boundary of Earth’s atmosphere.
The spacecraft will then make a suborbital journey with about six minutes of weightlessness, with the entire flight taking about 1.5 hours.
Bezos revealed in April 2017 that he funds Blue Origin each year with about $1 billion (£720 million) worth of Amazon stock.
The system consists of a pressurized crew pod on top of a reusable ‘New Shepard’ booster rocket.
At its peak, the capsule reached 104 kilometers, just above the official threshold for space, and landed vertically seven minutes after launch.
Blue Origin is working on New Glenn, the next generation of heavy rockets, which will compete with the SpaceX Falcon 9.