The Private Space Race: Which Companies Are Looking To Get To The Moon?

For a few years, interest in stepping on the Moon again resurfaced among humans. Unlike 1969, when the famous special race between USA and the then Soviet Union ended with the successful landing of Apollo 11, this time our satellite is not seen as the goal but as a step prior to the great objective: reaching Mars. Or colonize space, perhaps?

LOOK: The “failure” of the Starship: How much did the test cost that ended with the most powerful rocket in the world exploding

The truth is that another thing that has also changed in these more than 50 years is who stars in the race. Although the governments of the United States, Russia, India, China and Japan, among others, have once again seen the stars, this time they do so at the hands of private companies.

The latest takeoff test for SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which ended with the ship turning into a ball of fire last Thursday, reflects the progress made by Elon Musk’s company with a view to fulfilling its commitment to NASA to provide them with a functional ship return them to our satellite in 2025.

Musk and SpaceX, however, are not the only millionaires and companies with alien dreams.

BLUE ORIGIN

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are not only vying for the top spots on the list of the world’s richest men, but both head companies that dream of putting humans on the Moon.

In 2000, the also owner of Amazon founded Blue Origin, a company that set itself the goal of developing ships capable of suborbital and orbital flights.

These services would be offered both to the United States government and to private individuals who wished to enjoy an unusual trip through outer space.

Since about 2012, the company began developing systems for orbiting human spacecraft. Like SpaceX, Bezos’s company seeks to make the ships reusable.

In 2019, Blue Origin announced the development of the Blue Moon, a cargo module capable of reaching the Moon and carrying payloads of up to 6.5 tons, which is expected to be ready by early 2024.

In 2021, another of his ships, the New Shepard, successfully managed to go into outer space carrying Bezos himself among its passengers.

Since then, the millionaire has traveled three times outside of Earth.

Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, has traveled to space 3 times aboard one of his ships. (MARK RALSTON / AFP /)

In 2022, NASA chose SpaceX over Blue Origin as the company tasked with developing its lunar lander for the Artemis mission scheduled for 2025.

However, before the end of the year, the US space agency opened a new tender to obtain a second lander for the Artemis II stage.

Blue Origin was presented together with the also American Lockheed Martin and Boeing for this new tender, the winner of which will be announced by NASA only in June 2023.

However, Bezos would not be willing to wait that long and has already announced his intentions for his girlfriend, Lauren Sánchez, to lead a space mission with a crew made up exclusively of women and scheduled for early 2024.

If materialized, Blue Origin would have managed to send a female crew into space a year earlier than NASA itself plans.

VIRGIN GALACTIC

But if we are talking about anticipating space travel, it is impossible to ignore the eccentric Richard Branson.

Nine days before Bezos, the Virgin Group owner boarded his Unity rocket plane, developed by Virgin Galactic, along with two pilots and three other crew members, and took off from New Mexico to spend about an hour in outer space.

The British tycoon, then 70, described the flight as “the experience of his life”.

Branson surprised the world by anticipating Bezos by becoming part of the first group of people to engage in space tourism. (PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP /)

Unlike Bezos and Musk, who seem to be driven by more scientific than business curiosity, Branson has made no secret of his intention to set up a business on the Moon.

The billionaire confessed shortly after his trip to space that “I’ve always dreamed” with building a hotel on our satellite. Branson also added that if he is not able to fulfill it in life, he hopes that his children or grandchildren will do so.

Since the beginning of 2022, in addition, the Branson company has become a pioneer in the unusual field of space tourism, quoting each seat between 450,000 and 600,000 dollars.

OTHER INITIATIVES

Although the image of Musk, Bezos and Branson gather most of the spotlight on them, it would be a big mistake to think that they are the only ones immersed in the private race to space or to the Moon.

On Tuesday the 18th, for example, it became known that the Japanese company iSpace could be the first private company to successfully land on our satellite.

Japanese scientists plan to send their HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lander to the Moon on April 25, loaded with rovers developed by the space agencies of Japan and the United Arab Emirates.

“Our goal is to extend the sphere of human life into space and create a sustainable world by providing low-cost, high-frequency shuttle services to the Moon.”, the company pointed out on its Twitter account.

On the other hand, since 2007, in Pennsylvania, the company Astrobotic Technology created by the professor and expert in robots Red Whittaker together with other scientists is developing technologies that will seek to take human exploration of space, the Moon and other planets to the next level.

Astrobotic’s advances are so promising that by 2010 NASA had signed contracts worth more than $30 million with them.

To date, Astrobotic has developed the Griffin and Peregrin moon landing modules, the first of which is designed to carry exploration robots, while the second will seek to be a kind of “alien delivery” since it is intended to carry loads of 120 kilos towards the Earth. Moon.

Finally, we cannot forget to mention Moon Express, a company founded in 2010 in Florida by a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

Unlike the other companies mentioned in this article, Moon Express focuses its efforts on developing robots capable of extracting natural resources -mainly water- from the Moon. Since 2018, the company has also collaborated with NASA in the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

Source: Elcomercio