It was the year 1969, when Neil Armstrong added the famous words, “One small step
for a man, a giant leap for mankind”, when he became the first man to set foot on Moon
which fuelled every child with a dream of going to the moon. It was a time filled with
optimism but the technology didn’t develop after that and instead of growing an industry
around space, humans barely made it back to the moon. Till now, only 12 people have ever
visited the extra-terrestrial surface. But just like the space race that we witnessed
50 years ago, a new space era with the same enthusiasm is starting. Only This time there
are not competitors like United States and the Soviets, instead we have billionaires
competing to conquer space. We see NASA is firing up its rockets to go back to the moon
again and multiple startups and industries have sprung up in this new race with some
huge billionaire giants like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson where all are racing
to conquer the new space industry. In this video we will talk about all those big billionaires
and what are their plans for the future of our space.
This time it’s not only the US and the Russia. Several countries and private companies have
announced plans for space exploration. This year alone India and China have announced
their bids to be space powers with plans of launching missions to to mars and the moon.
US has plans for many deep space missions along with Europe and United Arab Emirates,
which has recently sent its probe on the red planet. So why has there been such interest
in the space recently!! Well it because the space industry is a new gold rush. The economics
is making sense and many new industries have formed around space. Already there are space
3d printing companies that have printed on the International space station (ISS). The
manufacturing of more efficient fibre optic cables has also become possible in space.
Space manufacturing could create many startling new technologies that would lead to industries
that don’t even exist today. Extraterrestrial colonisation is a fascination for these billionaires,
and space tourism is an exciting field for which many have even paid in advance. NASA
had announce its lunar program Artemis “to land the first woman and the next man on the
moon” and many private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are competing to provide their
services of commercial payloads for the mission. NASA also plans to land Astronauts on the
never visited part of the moon, The South Pole, and give astronauts 6.5 days on the
lunar surface. For this NASA turns to private companies and the richest man in the world,
Jeff Bezos, jumped at this opportunity. SpaceX founder Elon Musk successfully launched the SpaceX
Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Centre on May 30, 2020
in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Space tourism seems is also an area which SpaceX and Blue
Origin want to accomplish. But there is another player who wants his part in this, Richard
Branson and his Virgin Atlantic. Recently he announced that he has 800 astronauts who
have already signed up wanting to go to space.
So let’s discuss the first Billionaire and also the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos
and his company Blue Origin. Jeff Bezos has shown his fascination about Space and possibilities
of human life in space. The coming couple of years seem to be a busy year for Blue Origin,
and American Aerospace manufacturer led by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos founded in the year
2000 the company has a goal of improving space tourism and make it accessible to everyone
and even build space colonies for human beings in orbit complete with hotels, amusement parks,
restaurants and other infrastructures. His ventures are comparative to that of Richard
Branson and Elon Musk who also have put space Exploration as their foremost business interest.
Blue Origin is planning for a construction of a warehouse in Florida for building and
launching rockets with dreams to reach and find many ways to explore the moon. The company
has been invested in developing a vertical takeoff and landing spacecraft called New
Shepard, named after the astronaut Alan Shepherd who was the first American to go to space.
It is a reusable rocket and will not only make safe takeoff and landing but also will
save loads of cost of building and launching new rockets and aims to take passengers into
space and have a quick view of the earth and feel the weightlessness and excitement of
space. It plans to do so by sending a capsule into the orbit which would hold a maximum
of six people which might increase. Blue Origin has tested flights for this suborbital spacecraft
since 2015 and has succeeded. The company predicts the cost of a space flight for a
non astronaut would be two thousand dollars per head. Blue Origin focuses on safe travel
for non astronauts, the suborbital trip is expected to take only 11 minutes but the company
promises it will be the most outstanding 11 minutes of your life. The company also focuses
on scientific research to send payloads to space. The new Glenn Blue Origin has started
its orbital spaceflight mission since 2014 as a supplier for rocket engines . In 2016,
Blue Origin announced its orbital rocket to be named new Glenn after John Glenn. They
design the rocket to be reusable and will use vertical landing manoeuvre like that of
new Shepard and can be used for at least 25 missions. The new Glenn is a commercial move
to help company launch satellites to orbit and build a new road to space giving better
access to national, civil and commercial clients. Blue origin secured about 2.5 billion dollars
worth of investment from the private sector for the new Glenn mission. Recently Blue origin
revealed their lunar lander called the blue moon, which they hope will be used in 2021
for NASA lunar missions. Bezos wants to establish a lunar base and act as a cargo carrier service
for NASA. Jeff is investing around a billion dollars a year into Blue Origin because it’s
time to probably go back to the moon, this time to stay and build so that future generation
could unleash their creativity. The company has also signed multiple contracts with other
private companies and has launch customers who will have their TV and internet satellites
launched. Some of these companies are OneWeb and the Thailand based broadband service provider
MuSpace. Blue Origin have set their goals to reach the moon starting with the Blue moon
mission. They also plan to send an unmanned lander to the Lunar surface as well as a possibility
of building a crewed lander to the moon. The blue moon is also envisioned to deploy small
satellites to orbit around the moon to learn more about it. The mission is mainly about
a cargo carrier to land on the moon in 2024 and will also make use of the vertical landing
manuever, the vessel will carry around 4500 kilograms of payload and equipment to the
lunar surface. Blue Origin has great plans for the future and under the guidance of Jeff
Bezos it has the capacity to . But it snot the only company that’s changing the future
of Space.
SpaceX by Elon Musk is a huge contributor to the new Space Race. Elon Musk, the founder
of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla and founder of Paypal is one of the main visionaries of space today.
He is someone who dreams beyond what is possible. No one would have thought a private company
would be now sending astronauts to space, which he accomplished this year with the dragon
crew. He is now the fourth richest man in the world and was also ranked first on the
most innovative leaders in 2019 and continues to hold the title in 2020 along with Jeff
Bezos. SpaceX was founded in 2002 with goals very similar to that of Jeff Bezos, reducing
the cost of space transportation, reaching out further into space and others. However,
his idea of colonising the space and specially Mars and his fascination with Red Planet rekindled
public interest in sending people on Mars and set up a small greenhouse on Martian soil
to establish life. SpaceX along with several other companies has been selected to be a
part of NASA’s program. As NASA is preparing for its own lunar missions and has a pool
of companies capable of delivering payload to the moon effectively. Elon Musk was perhaps
one of the first pioneers of this new space industry when he founded SpaceX in 2002. Currently
SpaceX has comprehensive plans for the future colonisation of Mars, and in the meantime
the company is also focusing on providing satellite launching and space tourism. Recently
they joined NASA for their moon mission and SpaceX, made history when its Crew Dragon
capsule safely reached space carrying two NASA astronauts. It was the first time a private
company had put a human into orbit. SpaceX has a big and very ambitious StarLink project
to launch a network of small satellites into space and provide a global, reliable and fast
internet service. We can say that Elon Musk is building his own Internet, and recently
he Showcased this in his own Elon musk day when he tweeted using a Starlink satellite.
StarLink services are expected to be available in the United States and the Canada from 2021
and within a year with global coverage. As of the time this video is out, SpaceX has
launched about 655 StarLink satellites into the orbit and has a plan to launch 42000 satellites.
But not everyone is happy with this. Recently astronomers complained that these Starlink
satellites and their enormous amounts have obstructed their views and may become more
in the future. In the field of space internet SpaceX has competitors like Blue Origin and
Oneweb but SpaceX is far ahead of them and aiming to provide a global internet service
and also improve the lives of people who have been disadvantaged because of poor internet
and give them a chance to the worlds infinite knowledge.
SpaceX Boasts of its fleet of vehicles that
have been a major reason behind its success. And because of which SpaceX is way ahead than
other companies in this pace race for now. SpaceX is the first private company to successfully
launch to orbit and retrieve a spacecraft. The first private company to launch an object
in orbit around the sun and also the first private company to send astronauts into space.
The Falcon The SpaceX Project is a collection of launch vehicles which are the secret to
the company’s success. Falcon and Falcon heavy operates on the company’s merlin engines
and use a vertical takeoff and vertical landing manoeuvre which enables the reuse of first
stage of the rockets. We already have made a lot on videos on these Falcon vehicles which
we will link in the description below, so don’t forget to check them out. SpaceX’s
bid vehicle for humanity’s return to the moon it has in theory the capability to bring
in cargo for developing bases in the lunar surface for future moon missions the vehicle
like many of SpaceX’s projects is reusable the company is planning to make use of this
feature to minimise the cost of delivery of both cargo and crew for base building on the
Moon and Mars in the future its design makes use of an in-flight propellant transfer to
enable heavy cargo transfer to the lunar and Martian surfaces ultimately the design also
gives provision for carrying as many as a hundred people on a long-duration interplanetary
flight this is one of Musk’s most ambitious projects by far. SpaceX is also focused on
providing space tourism to people. SpaceX lunar mission project or the dear moon project
is a brilliant concept which will flyby near the moon and would l last for six days and
is supposed to launch by 2023.
But for Space Tourism, there is yet another player who is playing his role in this race.
We well know Richard Branson, who is the founder of Virgin Atlantic for his visions and contributions
that he is making to space tourism. He too has shown the same zeal and energy towards
space explorations comparable to that of Musk and Bezos. He started the Virgin Group in
the 1970s, and he nearly controlled 400 companies in various fields during that time. His group
of companies includes Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic Airlines and Virgin Galactic among
others. He has also made cameos in many films like Superman Returns and is a popular person
around the world. In 2004 he announced the founding of Virgin Galactic to develop a commercial
spacecraft targeting space tourism and research. The company prices its suborbital tour ticket
at $200,000 and plans to make use of the scaled composite White Knight to a quad jet cargo
aircraft to lift Virgin Galactic space ships into orbit. He found the company to maximise
the potential of space research and find fresh places to settle, identify new resources and
gain new resources and skills. Virgin Galactic is more focused on sub orbital launches, unlike
the previous two whose launch vehicles are our rocket-powered vertical systems. This
means that a Virgin Galactic vehicle is air launched from beneath a carrier plane. White
Knight 2 is a special airplane designed by Virgin galactic to be a launch platform for
both the spaceships and small satellites manufactured by the spaceship company TSC under Virgin
Atlantic. They also describe it as a large fixed-wing aircraft with two halls linked
by a rental wing and will bring the spacecraft to over 100 kilometres to around 16 kilometres
or 52 thousand feet above the ground. On the other hand, the unmanned launcher with a launch
vehicle will make use of a Boeing 747 as its launch platform. Virgin Galactic’s launch
vehicle is unique amongst other private space exploration companies because it makes use
of carrier planes for an air launch. They make this air launch possible via the Virgin
Galactic’s partnership with the spaceship company TSC, which it acquired in 2012. Virgin
Galactic plans to run a regular schedule for space flights similar to that of commercial
airplanes these space flights will ferry private individual and researchers.
We have made significant progress in this space race and these Billionaires are taking
it to a whole new level. The space race of this new decade continues, we may soon
be able to send many more missions to mars and even humans. Humanity is coming close
to building new homes outside our planet and thanks to Billionaires like these who can
make it possible. This time we have new renewed interest with a far better vision and technology
for this news pace industry. New manufacturing possibilities in microgravity, the possibility
of colonising mars and taking a vacation to space and others can become possible in the
future because of these Billionaires. space may be dark but the Future is bright for sure!!
SO what do you think about this new Space race of this new decade? What great heights
we will be able to reach? Let us know your views and questions in the comments section
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