SpaceX has become a true empire, without equal… for now! Jeff BezosJeff Bezos bides his time, patiently, discreetly, with his company Blue Origin. His own empire benefits from a quiet strength, very different from that of SpaceXSpaceXpropelled by the passion of its founder Elon MuskElon Musk“friend” (or influencer) of Donald Trump, and great opponent of Jeff Bezos, including for the place of the richest man in the world.
The great battle, and Darwinism of the space ecosystem
Is commercial space just an eternal battle of billionaires? All American companies developing rocketsrockets with high capacity only seem to survive under this condition, unless they inherit a certain inertia with a catalog of launches filled with juicy government contracts, as is the case with the United Launch Alliance (ULA). But it’s not forever. Even ULA is threatened with being bought… by Jeff Bezos, according to some.
There are many start-upstart-up aiming to become the future ULA or the future SpaceX. But many have already thrown in the towel or are still in the middle of the cross, sometimes even losing billions of dollars, like Relativity Space whose value has fallen sharply, even though they were positioning themselves as a real competitor to Elon’s company. Musk. In this arenaarenaJeff Bezos with Blue Origin remains the favorite to survive the supremacy of SpaceX, even to titillate it and, why not, overthrow it.
The New Glenn, the key to success
At 98 meters high, its first reusable floorreusable floor and capacities twice as high as those of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the large New Glenn rocketNew Glenn rocket is Jeff Bezos’ main instrument to attack the omnipotence of Elon Musk. For more than twenty years, he supported its development by injecting billions of dollars from his personal fortune. This patient development – which is, however, years behind schedule – has made it possible to develop the New Shepard, a small reusable single-stage rocket which can send tourists into space for a few minutes.
Twenty-five New Shepard flights since 2015, including one failure (which fortunately did not cause any casualties, the capsule being empty that day), demonstrate solid experience in flight and reuse. Added to this is the maturity of the New Glenn engines. The BE-4, which powers the first stage, has already flown twice last year because Blue Origin supplies the engine to ULA for the first stage of its Vulcan rocket. The engine is therefore already satisfactory, eyeseyes of the Pentagon, a valuable guarantor and also a potential important future customer of Blue Origin.
The New Glenn is ready to enter the world. Its manifesto is full, enough to allow the rate to be quickly increased, which will make it less expensive to the point of competing with SpaceX’s prices driven down by the massive deployment of satellites. StarlinkStarlink. Blue Origin will be able to do the same, because the company also has a satellite megaconstellation to deploy: Kuiper fromAmazonAmazonanother asset of Jeff Bezos. Thus, the New Glenn positions itself admirably as a complement to the Starship. Both will redefine the codes of access to space.
Bezos’ space galaxy
New Glenn is not the American billionaire’s only instrument of attack. Blue Origin is developing the Blue Ring, a vehicle that brings satellites closer to their final orbit, saving them a life expectancylife expectancy considerable (very much in demand today). It is also a considerable asset for proximity maneuvers, a skill that the Pentagon is fond of in the face of Chinese threats.
-Blue Origin is also developing a lunar lander called Blue Moon, commanded by the NasaNasa for Artemis missions not relying on the StarshipStarshipa redundancy that could be called into question with the arrival of Elon Musk to the American government. For a time, Blue Origin was even developing a future space stationspace station commercial, Orbital Reef, proposed to succeed theISSISS. But the project was put on hold to prioritize resources on New Glenn.
Finally, Jeff Bezos intends to compete with Starlink with the constellationconstellation Kuiper (initially 3,478 satellites), which will provide a high-speed connectivity service SpeedSpeed and better access to other online services launched by Jeff Bezos: Amazon, Prime, and the AWS cloud of which nearly 1.5 million businesses are customers.
Surviving “Trump-II”
The next few years will be quite eventful for Jeff Bezos, supporter of the Democrats. His rivalry with Elon Musk, Trump’s main supporter and future member of his government, will not help matters. However, the galaxygalaxy Bezos’s space transcends American presidencies. Bezos has enough reserves to take on SpaceX, while maintaining a friendly relationship with the US government. Bezos also donated a million dollars to the organization of the inauguration ceremony.
Jeff Bezos has all the cards in hand to compete with Elon Musk and SpaceX on all fronts, including in the vision of a multi-planetary humanity, shared by the two billionaires. Bezos’ advantage is above all his prudence, unlike theeccentricityeccentricity that Musk is increasing tenfold today by accumulating controversies, disinformation, support for the “reactionary international” criticized by Emmanuel Macron, and international interference putting obstacles in the way of Donald Trump and pushing friendly countries into the arms of China.
It is unknown how long Musk will play this character brimming with excess, often compared to the madness of Howard Hughes. It is unclear how SpaceX will emerge as a winner from Trump’s latest presidency. Will Musk one day bring his companies down with him? One thing is more certain: Jeff Bezos will survive him, and the success of the New Glenn weighs heavily in theequationequation.
