This week saw billionaire Jeff Bezos venture into space on the first crewed flight of his rocket ship, New Shepard. Although it was just 10 minutes and 10 seconds in length, Amazon’s billionaire founder proclaimed after the trip: ‘Best day ever!’
Bezos is by no means the only member of the uber-wealthy setting his sights on the stars. To ‘boldly go where no man has gone before’ could well be the mantra of many a Silicon Valley billionaire, whose fortunes are built on pushing forward with innovative new ideas. But once you’ve got the billion-dollar-valued company, the superyacht, the endless properties, the private jet, the collection of sports cars and the private island, what’s next? Space tourism might be the answer.
50 years after the first Space Race, which saw the USA pit itself against Russia during the height of the Cold War, a second is underway. This time, however, it’s the world’s richest men competing - with several vying to be the one to get the first commercial space trip launched. As well as Bezos, the billionaire triumvirate leading the pack includes Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson and SpaceX’s Elon Musk. Read on for more about their progress in the field so far.
Jeff Bezos
Bezos, currently the world’s richest man, set up his aerospace manufacturing company, Blue Origin, in 2000. The company’s motto - ‘Gradatim Ferociter’, Latin for ‘Step by Step, Ferociously’ - is even on Bezos’s personal coat of arms, highlighting the importance of the project to him.
New Shepard, the capsule that Bezos journeyed aboard for the first time this week, is intended to be a pioneering part of the newly-emerging market for space tourism. The rocket ship is designed with this function in mind, with features such as the biggest windows ever flown in space, granting passengers impressive views of the Earth below. The Blue Origin website explains that the crew capsule has ‘room for six astronauts’, as well as being ‘spacious and pressurized’, ‘environmentally-controlled for comfort and every passenger gets their own window seat.’
There’s much touting of the safety of the rocket ship, with a section relating: ‘Blue Origin has been flight testing New Shepard and its redundant safety systems since 2012. The program has had 15 successful consecutive missions including three successful escape tests, showing the crew escape system can activate safely in any phase of flight.’
While Bezos’ flight this week was a leap forward, there were just four passengers on board: his brother, Mark Bezos, 82-year-old Wally Funk (a former professional aviator and a pioneer of the space race), and 18-year-old student Oliver Daemen. While there’s no confirmation as yet as to when flights might become more widely available (Bezos has spoken of his egalitarian goals and hopes to make space travel a viable and affordable option for normal people), the Blue Origin website teases: ‘Our reusable launch vehicle is taking payloads - and soon you - to space.’
Sir Richard Branson
Bezos was pipped to the post, however, of being the first of the billionaire space tourism pioneers to take a trial flight aboard their own space crafts. This is an accolade held by Sir Richard Branson with his own spaceflight company, Virgin Galactic. The venture has been a passion project of Branson’s since 2004, when he officially registered it as a company. In 2008, he announced that he expected the inaugural flight to take place within 18 months, which is when several big names were reported to have bought $250,000 tickets - including Leonardo DiCaprio, Ned Rocknroll and Princess Beatrice. In October 2019, he floated the company on the stock market, securing $450 million of funding from a merger with Social Capital Hedosophia, which is run by a former Facebook executive, Chamath Palihapitiya.
After a few set-backs, including tragic accidents and financial issues, the first suborbital flight officially entered outer space on 13 December 2018, carrying two pilots and three passengers. While the first celebrity-carrying flight is yet to take off, Branson himself has now taken a jaunt on the space craft. Earlier this month, he successfully reached the edge of space aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket plane, which his company has been developing for 17 years. He dubbed the flight, which lasted just over an hour, the ‘experience of a lifetime’ and ‘just magical’, stating: ‘I have dreamt of this moment since I was a kid, but honestly nothing can prepare you for the view of Earth from space.’
Last summer, the first pictures of Branson’s Virgin Galactic were released, showcasing his entry to the race. The VSS Unity has space for six passengers to float in zero gravity, peering out of 12 circular windows while they ascend to 97km above Earth. There’s also a state-of-the-art space mirror, which allows passengers to see themselves in space ‘in a way that has really never been done before’.
Elon Musk
Eccentric entrepreneur Elon Musk, meanwhile, of Tesla fame, founded his SpaceX business in 2002, to reduce space transportation costs in order to allow for the colonisation of Mars. In 2014, he won contracts from NASA to develop their Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, proving that in the world of space travel, he has serious space chops.
Japanese billionaire and art collector Yusaku Maezawa bought every seat on the first flight of his Big Falcon Rocket in September 2018, something which Musk said ‘restored his faith in humanity’. He plans to invite three artists to accompany him (for free) and create pieces from space, a project called #DearMoon. The venture is currently recruiting eight crew members, ahead of its first planned mission to the Moon in 2023.
Just this week, SpaceX lit up its Super Heavy booster for the first time – igniting the rocket intended for another mission, that Musk hopes will one day send humans to Mars. The trial took place at the company’s Starbase rocket development site in Boca Chica, Texas. The boosters are designed to be attached to SpaceX’s Starship, which is also being tested at the site (images were previously circulated of some early Starship prototypes exploding upon landing after high-altitude test flights).
Last summer, SpaceX became the first private company to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, with Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken touching down in the Gulf of Mexico after a successful journey. ‘This day heralds a new age of space exploration,’ Musk said of the achievement. ‘I’m not very religious, but I prayed for this one.’
The competition to be the first space tourist carrier is certainly hotting up - watch this space.
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