Blue Origin blasts off (again) as Bezos prioritizes catching Musk in the billionaire space race
To infinity and Bezos… Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin hurtled its New Shephard rocket into space for the 23rd time on Tuesday — the company’s first successful launch since a failed attempt last year. After a day's delay, the uncrewed rocket carried science experiments for NASA and schools, along with thousands of kids’ postcards to space. S’cute.
Space taxi: Blue Origin’s taken 31 people to the edge of space, including Bezos and William Shatner (aka Captain Kirk). The actor’s review: “it felt like a funeral.”
Moonward bound: New Shepard is Blue Origin’s only operating project at the moment, but Bezos has galactic-size goals, including the XL New Glenn rocket and the Blue Moon lunar lander.
Tangled in SpaceX’s contrails… Winning a $3.4B NASA contract in May to build the Blue Moon lunar lander was an astronomical moment for Blue Origin, which had been passed over for a previous contract in favor of Elon Musk’s SpaceX. In the billionaire space race, SpaceX is like Usain Bolt, closing in on nearly 100 launches this year. SpaceX mostly ferries NASA astronauts and assorted stuff into space, but it took private citizens into orbit in 2021 and later to the International Space Station — meaning space tourism isn’t solely Bezos’ bag.
The other other billionaire: Richard Branson is struggling with his space-tourism company Virgin Galactic, which last month suspended flights and announced layoffs.
Winning the space race takes more than just $$... This week, Bezos acknowledged Blue Origin’s slow progress (he founded it in 2000). He said the CEO of a publicly traded company can’t give another company the attention it needs — perhaps a dig at Musk, who’s the boss at SpaceX and Tesla and pays a lot of attention to X. Bezos stepped down as Amazon’s chief exec in 2021, and recently said on Lex Fridman’s pod that, going forward, he’ll be leading Blue Origin directly.