The U.S. vs. the Soviet Union is so 1965. The 2025 space race is all about Musk vs. Bezos.
What happened: In the wee hours of Thursday morning, Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin launched its massive New Glenn rocket for the first time. While the rocket’s reusable engine was not able to land on a platform in the ocean, the campaign was still a success.
Why it matters: The launch is the first sign that Blue Origin could be a legit competitor to Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the emerging space industry — this could help drive down costs of future space endeavours like satellite deployments and, maybe one day, lunar tourism.
- As in any industry, it’s not good to have all your eggs in one corporate basket, which is arguably what’s happened with SpaceX as it’s dominated the rocket launching biz.
- Per the Wall Street Journal, U.S. federal officials want New Glenn flying regularly to reduce dependence on SpaceX (and lord knows they can’t trust Boeing to do that).
Zoom out: Blue Origin still has a lot of work to do to catch up to SpaceX. The company plans to launch New Glenn between six and eight times this year, but SpaceX carried out 134 rocket launches just last year.—QH