Musk and Bezos vie for the domination of their companies in the space industry.
Austin, washington For Tesla and PayPal founder Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, even space doesn’t seem big enough. Her space companies SpaceX and Blue Origin are currently fighting over the hugely important order for the new NASA lunar module.
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SpaceX scored points in the race for the new lunar module, which will bring US astronauts back to Earth’s satellite from 2024. The space company founded by Musk in 2002 got the NASA contract. But Blue Origin does not want to accept that, as the company founded by Bezos announced. She appealed to the US audit office because of an “incorrect” tender and warned that the US space agency’s decision for SpaceX endangered “America’s return to the moon”.
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In terms of financial resources, 57-year-old Bezos has the lead. According to Forbes, the founder of the shipping empire Amazon is the richest person in the world with a fortune of 202 billion dollars (168 billion euros). The 49-year-old Musk is said to have a net worth of $ 173 billion.
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In the space industry, however, Musk is clearly in the lead. The SpaceX subsidiary Starlink has already launched hundreds of satellites into space in order to secure a share of the global market for Internet connections. The Amazon subsidiary Kuiper has not yet succeeded in this, although Bezos has promised ten billion dollars in support. And SpaceX also has its foot in the door with the state. NASA values SpaceX as a reliable cargo supplier for the International Space Station ISS. In the meantime, SpaceX rockets have already brought astronauts to the ISS several times and thus freed NASA from its dependence on Russian Soyuz capsules. Blue Origin, on the other hand, has not made an “important step” in these areas, says space expert Xavier Pasco from the think tank Foundation for Strategic Research.
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