Narrator: The 21st century space race is here,
and in the midst of it all is a battle of the billionaires.
On one side, you have Elon Musk, CEO and founder of SpaceX,
and on the other, Jeff Bezos,
CEO and founder of Blue Origin.
Both are in a race to make space travel more affordable,
and as each company continues to grow and expand,
that race is heating up.
- Where did this all start?
Why are these two titans of the new space industry
clashing together?
This goes way back many, many years,
actually to the point where they were
not even conflicting at all.
In 2004, they had dinner together,
and they were not really enemies at all.
They just sat down, and they talked shop.
They talked about rockets:
"Well, how you gonna do this? How you gonna do that?"
"Well, this is how we're doing it.
"Here's how I wanna do it."
Narrator: Then again, things were different in 2004.
Both SpaceX and Blue Origin were relatively young companies.
Neither had launched anything into space.
And in fact, neither company
even had a functioning rocket yet.
- But fast-forward many years after their systems
started coming together, and what you start to see
is some rivalry, some big rivalry.
Narrator: One of the biggest flare-ups started in 2013
over the historic Launch Complex 39A.
After the space shuttles retired in 2011,
NASA wasn't using the launchpad.
- And so they opened it up for anybody who wants it.
SpaceX steps up to the plate
and says, "We want that for our rockets.
Look at 'em over here.
They're launching into space.
They're delivering useful things into orbit.
We'd like to use that as a point of operation."
Right after they did that, Blue Origin,
Jeff Bezos' company, comes in and says,
"We want that pad too."
Narrator: Bezos even went as far as filing
a complaint with the government
to prevent SpaceX from getting that launchpad.
Dave: And Elon Musk gets really mad about this,
and he says, "That's a phony blocking tactic.
This is just kind of a bunch of BS."
Narrator: Safe to say the feud
was officially in full swing.
Ultimately, SpaceX won, signing a 20-year lease
for pad 39A in 2014.
Then, later that same year, the two billionaires
were at it again, this time over patents.
Bezos had filed a patent for the technology
to build reusable rockets, a tactic
that could have earned him millions of dollars
from competitors who aimed to use similar technology.
But when Musk found out about it, he stepped in.
- And as part of his fight against this patent,
because Musk wanted to do the same thing
and he didn't want to have to shell out
gobs of money to Blue Origin, his competitor,
to use this concept, was he summoned this very old
I think Russian science-fiction movie
showing a rocket coming down and landing on a boat.
So that was used I think as evidence
to sort of put the kibosh on this patent,
and ultimately SpaceX prevailed.
Narrator: By the end of 2015,
the feud had made it to the world stage.
Of course, I'm talking about Twitter.
In November, Blue Origin launched and landed
its suborbital rocket for the first time.
- Jeff Bezos is really excited.
He goes onto Twitter and says,
"This is the rarest of beasts,
a used rocket back on the ground,"
to which Musk congratulates Bezos online,
but he also takes the opportunity
to sort of take a whack at this accomplishment
by saying, "Eh, it takes about 100 times more energy
to do what we're trying to do,
which is launch a payload into space
and bring the booster back.
That takes a hundred times the energy.
So great job, but we're gonna try this over here."
And that's exactly what SpaceX did a month later.
So this created some friction.
This is one of the first very public feuds
between Musk and Bezos, and it kept happening.
Narrator: So by 2019, the number of confrontations
had reached a record high.
At a private lecture in New York City,
Bezos criticized Musk's goal to colonize Mars.
He said, "My friends who want to move to Mars?
I say do me a favor: Go live on top of Mount Everest
for a year first and see if you like it
because it's a garden paradise compared to Mars."
Shortly after that, Musk went after Bezos
for announcing Blue Origin's plan
to launch thousands of satellites into space
for faster, better internet worldwide.
Dave: The problem is Musk had previously announced that,
called Starlink, years before, and it's 12,000 satellites,
and so he called Jeff Bezos a copycat in front of everybody.
That was a big moment.
Narrator: And not long after that,
there was another tweet from Musk
about Blue Origin's latest announcement
to return to the moon on its Blue Moon lander.
- Musk couldn't help himself.
He chimed in with some childish humor
by saying this is a terrible branding choice
when you're putting blue on a giant ball.
Narrator: Wow.
But in the end, it doesn't really matter
which of them is first to go to the moon
or first to set up a colony beyond Earth.
Dave: Behind the scenes, their visions
aren't all that different.
They both want to preserve the Earth.
They both want to move humanity out into space,
where we can have a bigger, bolder future
than we would otherwise by just sticking
to the surface of a rock.