Posted on 05/21/2023 3:13:32 PM PDT by algore
Outrageous egos battling each other across the cosmos? Check.
Sci-fi nerds who’ve definitely watched too much Star Trek? Check.
Humanity’s next chapter in a space left in the hands of insanely rich tech billionaires happy to take NASA’s tax-payer billions? Check.
This is Mission Control: We have lift-off!
Just a month after Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the world’s most powerful rocket to date - the 400-ft long, $67 million Starship - only for it to explode mid-air just four minutes into flight, a phoenix has risen from the flames to bravely take on the quest for space travel.
Or at least, that may be how bitter rival Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos sees it.
On Friday, NASA awarded his space-exploration company Blue Origin a coveted $3.4 billion to build a ‘lunar lander’ to take astronauts to the Moon.
As part of NASA’s Artemis V mission, scheduled for 2029, the lunar lander will collect astronauts from a NASA outpost orbiting the Moon, take them down to the lunar surface - and then bring them back again.
But, given that Musk’s company is already working on doing precisely the same thing for the Artemis program, we now face the prospect of two of Silicon Valley’s most contentious figures competing head-on in a bizarre new 21st-Century space race.
And this is no ordinary commercial contest. These are two ultra-competitive international business titans, both of whom have held the title of world’s richest person, and whose fierce rivalry goes back two decades.
Most recently, in 2021, SpaceX beat Blue Origin and another US company, Dynetics, to win a $2.9 billion contract to build a lunar-lander version of its vast Starship rocket - called the Starship HLS (Human Landing System) - to put man back on the Moon for the first time since 1972.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Yes it was a test flight and it was expected to fail. Space X and Musk stated countless times the odds of it reaching orbit were at best 50/50.
This test flight “failing” had nothing to do with Space X not being selected.
Unlike NASA who tries to avoid failures because it’s a government entity, space X embraces the rapid failure approach. Move quickly, test, when things fail and they will, learn and move on. Instead of trying to not even try something before you believe you have solved every single problem, etc.
I’ll state right now, I don’t care who the government selected for its moon shot, musk’s space X will almost certainly be the program that gets man beyond its current maximum in space flight which is the Moon.
Bezos is far more about self glory than true achievement.
The cowboy spaceflight he took, go read Musks response on it, and contrast that with Bezos cowboy hat wearing press conference after his flight.
One has vision and truly wants to push humanity, the other is just a rich guy stroking his own ego.
Good post. I agree.
Nasa accepted spacex bid for use of 39a back in 2014 for 20 years, and helps to pay the $1,000,000,00 in maintenance of the pad. so no nasa does not hate spacex
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