‘It’s NOT a competition’: Jeff Bezos says he’s not racing Branson and Musk to space and they’re all working to create a space ‘industry’ with plans for internet satellites, tourist flights and moving pollution away from Earth
- Bezos told Gayle King on Tuesday he is not competing against SpaceX and Virgin Galactic
- He said there was room in space for all of them and that it would become an ‘industry’
- Bezos wants to create reusable, operable capsules and rockets that will allow industries to be moved to space
- He says it’ll save the planet by protecting its fragile environment from pollution
- Virgin boss Richard Branson wants to establish space tourism with flights to the edge of earth’s atmosphere
- Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars and set up broadband internet satellites
- Branson was the first of the three to go to space on his VSS Unity earlier this year
- Musk hasn’t yet made it but SpaceX has sent two teams of astronauts up
Jeff Bezos said on Wednesday he is not competing with SpaceX’s Elon Musk and Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson with his spaceflight and instead said they are all contributing to a future space industry that would eventually have ‘thousands’ of companies.
The three billionaires all have varying goals when it comes to their individual space missions.
Richard Branson wants to establish commercial space tourism with his Virgin flights while Bezos says he wants to move all of the harmful, polluting industries on Earth to space to allow them to continue while preserving Earth’s environment.
Musk wants to put broadband satellites in space and also colonize Mars.
The three have different ‘missions’ but the progress of their projects has led many to believe their space race is nothing more than an ego-driven competition between three of the world’s richest men.
Bezos told Gayle King on Tuesday he is not competing against SpaceX and Virgin Galactic or their founders and that all three could exist in space
Bezos, in an interview with CBS This Morning that aired on Wednesday, insisted this wasn’t the case.
‘I promise you it really isn’t [a competition]. It is not a competition. If you want to think about it, there’s one first person in space – his name is Yuri Gagarin and it happened 60 years ago.
‘What we have to do is build a whole industry Gayle, it’s got to be an ecosystem made up of dozens, hundreds, thousands of companies.
‘Just like what you see with the internet today… two kids in a dorm room could start a space company that changes the world.
‘You have to have many companies pulling together.
‘They compete against each other but there can be many winners,’ he told Gayle King.
Branson congratulated Bezos’ Blue Origin team on Twitter on Tuesday after their mission, saying: ‘Well done Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, Mark, Wally and Oliver.
‘Impressive! Very best to all the crew from me and all the team at Virgin Galactic.’
Branson was the first of the three to go to space on his VSS Unity earlier this year.
Musk hasn’t yet made it but SpaceX has sent two teams of astronauts up.
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson went to space in VSS Unity earlier this month. Musk’s SpaceX has sent two crews to space but he has not been on either flight
Bezos also said he doesn’t think people ‘understand’ what he’s trying to achieve and that his flight was not just a billionaire’s joy ride.
‘I don’t think people understand or most people don’t,’ he said.
‘If you think about it, we, humanity, is big now. The earth is small, it’s fragile. It feels big to us but when you get into space and see the atmosphere it’s so thin and fragile-looking.
‘This sounds fantastical but it will happen – we can move all heavy industry, all polluting industry, off of earth and operate it in space. And that can’t happen today it will take many decades.
‘It will be like in the era of the Kitty Hawk, tiny little airplane that can fly 100ft. If you told somebody someday there would be a 787, it would seem impossible.
‘We’ve been to all the planets in the solar system with robotic probes, this is the good one. it’s the only good one and we have to protect it.
‘Mark and I are going to be dead before this job is done, it’s not about us.
‘It’s about what Blue Origin can do, which is build a space vehicle that is so operable, inexpensive and commercial that it becomes the infrastructure the next generation can use to take those big steps.’
THE BILLIONAIRE SPACE RACE: HOW BRANSON, MUSK AND BEZOS ARE VYING FOR GALACTIC SUPREMACY
Jeff Bezos in front of Blue Origin’s space capsule
Dubbed the ‘NewSpace’ set, Jeff Bezos, Sir Richard Branson and Elon Musk all say they were inspired by the first moon landing in 1969, when the US beat the Soviet Union in the space race, and there is no doubt how much it would mean to each of them to win the ‘new space race’.
Amazon founder Bezos had looked set to be the first of the three to fly to space, having announced plans to launch aboard his space company Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft on July 20.
The billionaire mogul will travel with his younger brother Mark, a charity auction winner who’s shelling out $28 million and pioneering female astronaut Wally Funk, 82.
However, Branson has now announced he’s planning to make a suborbital flight nine days before Bezos and his brother. He revealed on Twitter that he plans to be Astronaut 001 on Virgin Galactic’s July 11 test flight.
Although SpaceX and Tesla founder Musk has said he wants to go into space, and even ‘die on Mars’, he has not said when he might blast into orbit.
SpaceX appears to be leading the way in the broader billionaire space race with numerous launches carrying NASA equipment to the ISS and partnerships to send tourists to space by 2021.
On February 6 2018, SpaceX sent rocket towards the orbit of Mars, 140 million miles away, with Musk’s own red Tesla roadster attached.
Elon Musk with his Dragon Crew capsule
NASA has already selected two astronauts who will be on-board the first manned Dragon mission.
SpaceX has also started sending batches of 60 satellites into space to help form its Starlink network.
Musk hopes this will provide an interconnected web of satellites around Earth which will beam down free internet to people worldwide.
Branson and Virgin Galactic are taking a different approach to conquering space. It has repeatedly, and successfully, conducted test flights of the Virgin Galactic’s Unity space plane.
The first took place in December 2018 and the latest on May 22, with the flight accelerating to more than 2,000 miles per hour (Mach 2.7).
More than 600 affluent 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.
Branson has previously said he expects Elon Musk to win the race to Mars with his private rocket firm 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 to the side and one overhead.
The space ship is 60ft long with a 90inch diameter cabin allowing maximum room for the astronauts to float in zero gravity.
It climbs to 50,000ft before the rocket engine ignites. SpaceShipTwo separates from its carrier craft, White Knight II, once it has passed the 50-mile mark.
Passengers become ‘astronauts’ when they reach the Karman line, the boundary of Earth’s atmosphere.
The spaceship will then make a suborbital journey with approximately six minutes of weightlessness, with the entire flight lasting approximately 1.5 hours.
Bezos revealed in April 2017 that he finances Blue Origin with around $1 billion (£720 million) of Amazon stock each year.
The system consists of a pressurised crew capsule atop a reusable ‘New Shepard’ booster rocket.
Bezos is one of the richest men in the world and Blue Origin has successfully flown the New Shepard rocket 15 times.
At its peak, the capsule reached 65 miles (104 kilometres), just above the official threshold for space and landed vertically seven minutes after liftoff.
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