BILLIONAEIRS INTO SPACE….
In 20th century rocket science were developed opening the gates to explore space. After world war 2 united states and soviet nation start their way to space. On oct 4th in 1957 soviet nation launched the very first artificial satellite Sputnik 1 int space. In 1958 united states sent their first satellite Explore 1 into space. This way there were competition between countries from the beginning of industrial revolution. Now not only the countries but the multibillionaires are started competition among them. In this article I’m planning to talk about competition between them and the impact of their space race to the field of astronomy. As we all know until recently there were only government agencies leading the space programs. As an example, America has NASA and Russia has ESA. There are several competitors in the space race and I’m focusing on two main competitors in this field, Elon Musk founder of SpaceX and Jeff Bezos founder of Blue Origin. Let’s look at what SpaceX is…
Elon Musk wants to establish a permanent selfsustaining city on Mars that thought led him to start SpaceX, aerospace manufacture and space transportation organization. He always wants to reduce the cost which spent on space transportation. So, he starts to develop launch vehicles. In 2008 after three failures SpaceX launched Falcon 1 launch vehicle. Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid fuel launch vehicle. After this SpaceX was awarded a billion-dollar NASA contract to develop their next generation vehicle called Falcon 9. It is a partially reusable launch vehicle. SpaceX is the first private company that successfully launch orbit and recover a spacecraft, named Dragon in 2010. In 2016 SpaceX started construct internet constellation named Starlink. It consists of thousands of small satellites in low Earth orbit. In 2018 they launched object into orbit around the Sun. Using Falcon Heavy, they launched Tesla Roadster with a mannequin dressed in spacesuit named “Starman” into Sun’s orbit. Musk views a Mars colony as a contingency plan for humanity and a beacon of inspiration for humankind. Each of SpaceX’s vehicles are tools in service of the movement towards building colonies and cities on Mars. Using these vehicles SpaceX is actualizing Musk’s vision to open up the space for human colonization.
The main competitor of Elon is Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon. His vision to create a future where millions of people are living and working in space led him to start aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company named Blue Origin. Jeff mainly focuses on building a road to space with new rockets that could ultimately pave the way for floating colonies, in order to do that he has planned sequence of bigger and bigger rockets. They designed reusable and sub-orbital spaceflight named New Shepard to take astronauts and payloads to the boundary of space. New Shepard is expected to fly its first human astronauts to sub-orbital space in near future. And then they launched New Glenn rocket which will be able to lift substantial payloads to the moon like SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. They hope to first fly of New Glenn in 2021. In 2019 Bezos unveiled Blue’s near-term mission named as Blue Moon, to colonize the moon for exploration, science and resource utilization. The Blue Moon lunar lander which would travel to the moon by 2024. Bezos thought that building these colonies will take generations but through Blue Origin he is completing some of the fundamental requirements to achieve his vision.
You all may have heard about NASA’s next lunar landing project, named Artemis program. For this program NASA has chosen three companies to design lunar landers. SpaceX and Blue Origin are also among these three companies. This is the latest competition between these two billionaires. These two companies look quite similar in its attempts to explore space. That’s why there’s a tough competition between them. At the beginning Blue Origin was leading this race. But in past ten years we often heard about SpaceX’s missions and launches, Blue Origin does not come out to be so ambitious in gaining attraction. Their competition started back in 2013 when NASA announced auction about one of its launch pad LC-39A which used to launch Saturn V models. SpaceX and Blue Origin fight to get this but at the end SpaceX won the battle and owned LC-39A launch pad. The second battle was against Blue Origin’s patent on landing rockets on ships at sea. SpaceX was plaining to land first stage of Falcon 9 on ship at sea. They had to pay to Blue Origin in order to land their rocket on sea because of the patent owned by Blue Origin. So, SpaceX filled a case against this patent saying this concept is used earlier in novels and films. At the end SpaceX won the case and got the permission to land their rockets without paying. In 2015 a twitter battle between Elon and Jeff went viral.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard successfully launched and landed and became first sub-orbital rocket returned from space, at that time SpaceX’s Falcon 9 was at experimental level. Elon posted about his earlier attempt where he used Grasshopper rocket. However, Jeff’s New Shepard was successful than Elon’s Grasshopper. In 2003 SpaceX started to design Falcon Heavy which is larger in size and has highest payload capacity. To against this Blue Origin announced their New Glenn rocket which is similar to Falcon Heavy. In this year SpaceX achieve major victory by sending astronauts to international space station and bringing them back to the earth. Aside all these rivalry because of the competition between private companies there’s a silver lining for development of space technology.
When space agencies like NASA and ESA opened for business in 1900s’ private spaceflights were just a sci-fi dream. With the rise of companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin make this dream come true. The main difference between government agencies and the private companies is about the budget. Private companies always run with their profit because of that they always try to design highly efficient rockets with low cost. Non profitable government agencies like NASA always wanted this. So now private companies designing rockets behalf of NASA as well as other agencies. Because of this competition there was a rapid development in space exploration in past 20 years.
As an overall conclusion I feel this competition between world billionaires gives a positive impact on the field of astronomy as well as existence of the humankind. Nowadays this space race is very popular around the world and it is making huge enthusiasm about science and technology among young generation. So, I hope in near future every one of us can be experience our very own space journey.