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Commercialization

Musk Vs Bezos: True Space Commerce Has Finally Arrived

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 26, 2021
Filed under , , , ,
Musk Vs Bezos: True Space Commerce Has Finally Arrived

The rivalry between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos already was intense. Now it’s extending to the moon., Washington Post
“In a flier distributed on Capitol Hill last week, Elon Musk’s SpaceX warned that legislation now being considered would reward “Jeff Bezos with a $10 billion sole-source hand-out” that would tie up NASA’s moon plans and hand “space leadership to China.” Bezos’s Blue Origin space company countered quickly and forcefully. “Lie.” “Lie.” “Lie,” it said of each of the allegations in SpaceX’s paper, adding: “What is Elon Musk afraid of … a little competition?” (Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The dueling documents are the latest point of tension in a long-simmering rivalry between two of the world’s wealthiest men, billionaire “space barons” who have sparred on and off for years in their quest to privatize human space exploration. Musk and Bezos have fought over a launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center, battled over a patent related to landing rockets and argued over which of them actually pulled off that feat first.”
Keith’s note: Well worth reading. Stop and think about this for a moment, space commerce fans: Two billionaires who take turns being the richest person on Earth – are spending billions from a seemingly inexhaustible pot of money – to develop their own space infrastructures that eclipses – much of which NASA is incapable of doing. And now they are spending time and money squabbling about doing things in space with each one (and other billionaires too) trying to out-compete the other by doing even more in space – usually with their own money.
In a nutshell: space is now something that is worth the effort of the world’s business leaders to use their finite work hours to trash talk about. Space is now much more important than it was a decade ago. The last time this sort of clash of the titans happened we ended up with vast train and airline systems, global communications networks, transnational manufacturing trade, etc. Just think of what lies ahead.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

46 responses to “Musk Vs Bezos: True Space Commerce Has Finally Arrived”

  1. Winner says:
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    The problem is that Bezos and Blue Origin is slow and has not yet even flown a person to space nor orbited a vehicle. SpaceX orbited a vehicle over a decade ago. And Blue Origin is older than SpaceX. So why again should BO get $billions of dollars for a moon program, given their minimal accomplishments and glacial progress?

    • Bill Hensley says:
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      True enough, but maybe he will succeed. At least he has a passion for it, and the money to burn. You should wish him health and long life, or his dream will likely die with him, as it did for Paul Allen. I doubt his heirs will be as willing to sink billions into it.

      • Christopher James Huff says:
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        Does he actually have a passion for it? Because while he certainly seems interested in the appearances, he also seems to be putting more energy into blocking the people who are actually doing stuff with dirty legal and political deals.

        • Terry Stetler says:
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          All show, no go.

          • Matthew Black says:
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            Yes. I saw a LOL comment somewhere a few days ago; remarking that the folks at Blue keep congratulating themselves for doing nothing more than ‘flying their giant d1ldo up and down a few times!!’

      • Jack says:
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        If he has passion for it he’s doing a good job hiding it.

        • gunsandrockets says:
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          Did you watch his public unveiling of his Blue Moon lander?

          • Jack says:
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            Big deal. That was just a dog and pony show.

            I haven’t heard of Bezos working on the factory floor to get help get things done like Musk. I haven’t heard of Bezos participating in late night design meetings like Musk. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone at BO works much OT.

    • Rusty Shackleford says:
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      It’s hard for me to take someone calling Elon a liar serious when they are yet to put a single ounce into orbit.

    • ed2291 says:
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      I absolutely and completely agree!

      Keith is right to point out that competition is good. The problem is Blue Origin is not competing. Sputnik achieved orbit in 1957. We are still waiting for Blue Origin to achieve orbit.

      Blue Origin appears – like Boeing – to want massive federal funding for nothing in return. It is Blue origin rather than Space X which is afraid of competition. It is Blue Origin rather than Space X which is lying.

    • echos of the mt's says:
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      Blue Origin was also suppose to have an tested engine ready for the Vulcan launcher this year but it seems they don’t have a flight ready one yet.

    • mfwright says:
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      I was wondering if there’s some other objective i.e. Discoverer, Glomar Explorer, NASP (Copper Canyon). Interesting plausible programs but totally out of scope. SpaceX Starship looks too unreal to be spaceworthy. But then a flyback first stage rocket seemed unreasonable some years ago. The drama is interesting to watch, there was the space race of the sixties of saber rattling between US and USSR. Now we have Bezos and Musk with Housley using a WWF analogy.

  2. Jim Gagnon says:
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    Competition is good, though I’m not so sure Blue Origin is the competitor to drive SpaceX to succeed. I wish Boeing would let ULA unleash ACES and submit a bid. Would beat Blue Origin and Dynetics hands down.

    • Todd Austin says:
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      ULA certainly has a head start on the other 2nd-tier outfits in developing lower-cost launch vehicles. Tory Bruno impresses me as a person who gets what he has to do to adapt to the new environment.

      BO/Bezos and the rest of the price-too-high-performace-too-low crowd still seem to think that they can solve all of their problems in a courtroom or a back room, rather than at a drawing board.

      Performance beats posturing these days. The world has changed.

      • Christopher James Huff says:
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        Head start? They’re in a dead-end. Their upcoming vehicle is another expendable sustainer core using strap-on solid boosters and an upper stage that uses two pricey RL-10 engines.

        • Terry Stetler says:
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          It’s one thing to have BE-4 delays impacting New Glenn, but now they’re impacting NSSL launches (1 moved to Atlas V and counting), the Peregrine lunar lander under CLPS, Dream Chaser under CRS-2, and Bezos’ other pet project Kuiper (nine Atlas V’s bought because Vulcan is delayed) and Vulcan’s commercial customers. Vulcan was also supposed to launch Bigelow’s modules.

          Jeff B. had better do some ‘splainin, and soon.

    • TheRadicalModerate says:
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      ACES is not a lander. XEUS, which was designed as an ACES add-on kit, could be a lander, but it’s not much more than a powerpoint presentation at this point.

  3. Bill Housley says:
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    “…battled over a patent related to landing rockets and argued over which of them actually pulled off that feat first.”

    How about the question of which one actually flies rockets into orbit?

    While I’ll agree that it is a great time for commercial space, hands down, I still don’t see how Bezos competes with Elon anywhere except net worth and bluster.

    I like that he’s moving a little bit faster. He’s building a rocket, a rocket engine, and asking the government for money. That is a great start, it really is. Some day when things start to actually fly it’ll be awesome indeed to see.

    I’ve watched WWF wrestlers trash talk. Macho Man Randy Savage is my favorite. If Rocket Man Elon Musk and Smile Box Jeff Bezos want to put on the spandex and go to the cameras and microphones and talk it up about how they’ll remove various extremities of the other and wrap them around various things it’d be quite a hoot. However, as far as the rocket industry goes, I just see a chihuahua barking at a rottweiler. It’s sad really. Bezos is an epic and resourceful businessman who I respect a lot. It pains me to lampoon him, it really does. I don’t understand why he’s hiding his talents when it comes to space.

    To Bezos I would say, if you can’t run with the big dogs, sit on the porch and whine with the puppies. To Musk I would say, don’t wrestle with pigs…you’ll just get all muddy and the pig will actually enjoy it more than you will.

    • mfwright says:
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      >How about the question of which one actually flies rockets into orbit?

      Take it to the next level and who can make spaceflight a routine business like airliners and cargo ships?

  4. R.J.Schmitt says:
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    This competition between billionaires over space achievements will not be a true competition until one of the two participants actually achieves something new/unusual/valuable in space technology.

    Blue Origin is over 20 years old and has yet to put a kilogram of payload into low earth orbit (LEO). All show and no go.

    In this case the rabbit has thoroughly beaten the turtle.

    • Andrew Sexton says:
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      though space shuttle was reusable, it is nothing like the re-use of the Falcon 9 (crewed and uncrewed), particularly when the costs of such re-use gets factored in. I mark this down as checking your 1st point.

  5. Bad Horse says:
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    Keith is right. This will make Boeing, ULA, even NASA (to some degree) irrelevant over the next 20-30 years.
    If we could get zero G – zero tax for products made (in some part) in space and provide 100% tax credit for commercial infrastructure.. just wow what can be achieved.

  6. Bad Horse says:
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    NASA future in space is like the national science foundations in Antarctica. A base serviced by others (USAF aircraft, USN ships), staffed by contractors doing science and maintaining the base. US Gov funding to keep it going and replace/build as needed.

  7. Jack says:
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    Blue Origin has no claim to being the first to land a rocket even a sub-orbital one. That was first done back in 1993 by the DC-X Delta Clipper.

    • gunsandrockets says:
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      As far as landing a sub-orbital rocket, what about the Apollo 11 lunar landing of 1969?

      • Jack says:
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        What was sub-orbital about that? When the LM undocked from the CSM it was in lunar orbit until it performed the PDI burn.

  8. TheRadicalModerate says:
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    I suspect that Elon yanks Jeff’s chain just for the lulz. But Jeff has to be feeling a little desperate now, and the trash talk may be essential to Blue’s survival.

    Blue simply hasn’t performed. If it weren’t bankrolled by the world’s richest man, it would be gone, or more likely absorbed by one of the incumbents. Blue has missed the boat on the orbital launch market, is getting ready to miss out on the new segment that deals with megaconstellations, and now appears to be halfway through whiffing on Jeff’s actual mission statement: enabling a lunar economy that can ultimately support millions of people living in Earth orbit.

    If Blue doesn’t manage to pull a lobbyist out of a hat and get a big chunk of LETS, I think it’s gone. And the only way for that to happen is if Blue can find somebody in the government to throw sand in SpaceX’s gears. I expect this to get ugly. Whether the ugly is effective, we’ll see.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      I don’t think so. Jeff Bezos has defined how businesses succeed through unceasing innovation and SpaceX has put the Commercial Space industry on a growth trend. There is going to be plenty of room for lots of folks and somebody needs to compete with SpaceX believably for the industry to grow properly.

      I have no doubt that Blue Origin can catch up. They just need to find their niche. They also need to stop chaining themselves to the dinosaurs.

      • TheRadicalModerate says:
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        Blue can’t catch up unless they can find a market where they’re not perpetually behind. They designed a launcher to compete with Falcon Heavy and still haven’t delivered on it, while SpaceX is busy getting ready to make FH (and New Glenn) obsolete. Blue has no hope of jumping straight to a Starship-class launcher, because they simply don’t have the operational experience to attempt it.

        And at some point, Jeff’s money stops being enough to sustain Blue. SpaceX is already attracting billions in non-Musk capital. Think that’s happening for Blue? Nope. And it won’t until they demonstrate a viable market position on something. But that something is getting more and more expensive to establish.

        That sounds like a death spiral to me.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          What’s more, SX has figured out a way to fund the whole ‘Mars thing’: Starlink will provide a steady income stream.

        • Bill Housley says:
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          I agree with most of this, but all ships rise with the tide.

          Recently, SpaceX launch prices triggered a surge in small launchers for sending up small satellites who’s market had expanded beyond SpaceX’s launch cadence. Similar stuff to that will happen soon. SpaceX is doing great, and leading the industry, but they are still just one company in a rapidly expanding industry. SpaceX also has one main focus which will draw their focus away from New Glenn’s market footprint very soon.

          You are right though. Without a doubt BO needs to stop playing around with toy rockets and start doing some business…and quickly. Sitting on the ground whining doesn’t influence an industry…getting paid by customers to deliver influences an industry.

          • Chris says:
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            Except Blue Origin can’t even launch small payloads to orbit… Bezos can thank himself for hiring “Old Aerospace” to head his company.

    • Christopher James Huff says:
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      Bezos can continue pouring billions into it to keep it going, but Blue Origin’s going to have an increasing problem with credibility unless they start executing on their plans.

      As I see it, he’s already “whiffed” on his mission statement. Space colonies need cheap, frequent launch, optimized for delivery of mass to LEO to maximize the benefit of orbital propellant transfer and the efficiency of delivering mass to the target orbit…he doesn’t have any launch capability, and appears in no rush to develop it.

      And then he comes up with the National Team joke of a lunar lander proposal…the bare minimum possible to meet the requirements of landing people on the moon, with zero capability to support his stated goals of orbital habitats. They’ll need redevelop the whole thing just to handle NASA’s exploration plans.

      • TheRadicalModerate says:
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        If Blue insists on competing head-to-head with SpaceX, it’s gonna lose every time. SpaceX has too much of a technological, operational, and even institutional advantage.

        If I were Jeff, I’d be out of the launcher business. Instead, Blue needs to bet big on the lunar surface market and develop the things that SpaceX doesn’t care about: cis-lunar transfer stages, short-hop point-to-point lunar transport, lunar surface equipment, and, last but hardly least, ISRU-based manufacturing.

        I’ve always liked Blue’s vision of a thriving cis-Earth economy better than SpaceX’s obsession with Mars. But they don’t have a prayer if they insist that they have to be a launch company before they’re anything else.

        • Christopher James Huff says:
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          I don’t think what SpaceX has done is totally beyond anyone else to reproduce, and even if SpaceX maintains their lead, there’s certainly room for a second launch services provider to do better than the other companies being steamrolled by SpaceX. Bezos could be pushing hard to reduce prices and develop the capabilities that will be needed to achieve his orbital habitats. Completing and building on New Glenn (or, say, scaling back to something smaller for some orbital experience before tackling a Starship equivalent) could be genuinely useful for those goals.

          However, he instead seems to be pushing to get let into the old boy’s club where he can get a token share of the existing launch market and the prestige of being involved in the occasional multi-gigadollar NASA project.

          • TheRadicalModerate says:
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            Institutional knowledge is a real thing, and it accumulates exponentially. Even if Blue was as good at accumulating it as SpaceX (and they’re clearly not), they’re not going to get ahead without engineering feats even more astounding than those SpaceX has pulled off.

            Put another way: Blue can’t work on a Starship competitor, because that vehicle requires the experience gained from a high-cadence F9 or FH competitor. Meanwhile, there are going to be more and more design wins for Starship-enabled spacecraft systems, and fewer and fewer for medium-to-medium-heavy launchers.

            Blue needs to “hit ’em where they ain’t.” They’re never going to be successful in the launcher biz.

  9. rb1957 says:
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    How about instead of funding the work, NASA has a prize competition ? $4b for the first company to land (and return safely) on the moon.

    Yes, I know fraught with issues … how much co-operation/involvement with NASA ? Competitors wouldn’t want NASA delaying one over the other, or sharing information, Or the competitors being held up for some NASA component (like the Gateway).

  10. Vladislaw says:
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    From day one Bezos said he is not after the sat launching but wants to service space manufacturers. He does not need a rocket until the the 3D printing tests are finished at the ISS and a commercial station is operational and they start going after ZBLAN market.

    • Tom Billings says:
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      “From day one Bezos said he is not after the sat launching but wants to service space manufacturers.”

      Indeed, the recent Sierra Space announcement about hosting Redline/Made-in-Space in their recently announced Space Station is already along those lines. Perhaps it will be better for J. Bezos to simply invest in Sierra Space? He’s gotta get out from under the current oldSpace B.O. management, somehow!

    • Christopher James Huff says:
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      There will be no space manufacturing without space access. SpaceX, hell, Virgin Orbit is doing more to serve space manufacturing than Blue Origin. When there’s a ZBLAN market to go after, it’ll be built on SpaceX services, because guess what? They’re the ones providing cheap and frequent access to space. Then what? Throw lawyers and politicians into claiming what’s rightfully his from the people who built it? Truly a commendable business plan!

      This is nothing but a pathetic excuse for their failure to accomplish anything.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        I believe BO will enter into partnerships like Amazon does. There will be empty rockets sitting idle if there isn’t any manufacturers to launch. Chicken and the egg. All BO needs to do is be ready when the first commercial space station is completed.

        • Christopher James Huff says:
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          Ready to do what, send smug tweets implying they had something to do with it? Seriously, where did you come up with this nonsense? SpaceX will be ready, because they’ll already be launching the space station components, equipment, and raw materials. Real competitors like Rocket Lab will be ready, having been doing the same if at a smaller scale. Blue Origin will be caught yet again with nothing real to offer.

  11. richard_schumacher says:
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    Just think of what lies ahead.

    A new Gilded Age!

  12. George Purcell says:
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    Heinlein was a prophet.