Billionaire space race

Jeff Bezos (top), Richard Branson (middle) and Elon Musk (bottom), widely seen as the main competitors of the billionaire space race^[1]

The billionaire space race^[2][3][4][5] is the rivalry among entrepreneurs who have entered the space industry from other industries - particularly computing.^[6][7] This private spaceflight race involves sending privately developed rockets and vehicles to various destinations in space, often in response to government programs or to develop the space tourism sector.^[8]

Since 2018 the billionaire space race has primarily been between three billionaires and their respective firms:

• Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is seeking to establish an industrial base in space.^[5][3][1]
• Richard Branson's Virgin Group (through Virgin Galactic and the now cancelled Virgin Orbit), which seeks to dominate space tourism, low-cost small orbital launch vehicles, and intercontinental sub-orbital spaceflight.^[5][3][1]
• Elon Musk's SpaceX, which seeks to colonize Mars as well as provide satellite-based internet through its Starlink project.^[5][1]

Prior to his death in 2018, Paul Allen was also a major player in the billionaire space race through the aerospace division of his firm Vulcan and his financing of programs such as Scaled Composites Tier One. Allen sought to reduce the cost of launching payloads into orbit.^[4][9][5]