Space Race: The sport of choice for billionaires Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk

Amazon.com Inc billionaire founder Jeff Bezos said last week he is stepping down as chief executive of the e-commerce company as he looks to focus on personal projects, including his rocket startup Blue Origin.

Building and sending rockets to outer space is a capital intensive business, but two of the richest men in the world, Bezos and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have invested billions of dollars
over the years to make inroads in this market.

Read: An unleashed Jeff Bezos will seek to shift space venture Blue Origin into hyperdrive

Blue Origin and SpaceX mainly aim to send satellites for clients into orbit at an affordable price and reuse parts of rockets to keep costs in check.

Here’s how the two space startups measure up against one another:

Founded

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin 2000, headquartered in 2000, headquartered in Kent, Washington.

Elon Musk's SpaceX Founded 2002, headquartered in Hawthorne, California.

Funding

Most funds come from Bezos, who said in 2017 he would sell $1 billion worth of his Amazon.com Inc stock every year to fund the company. Total funding and valuation have not been publicly disclosed.

Backers include Elon Musk, Alphabet Inc, Fidelity Investments, and Bailie Gifford. The next round of funding is expected to give it a valuation of at least $60 billion, according to a Business Insider report.

Goals

Blue Origin, whose Latin motto means "step by step, ferociously," is working towards making civilian space flight an important niche in the global space economy, alongside satellite services and government exploration projects.

SpaceX says its ultimate goal is to enable people to live on Mars.

Milestones

Blue Origin, yet to launch anything into orbit, has launched and landed its suborbital rocket, New Shepard, more than a dozen times. It aims to complete development of its much bigger workhorse orbital rocket, New Glenn, by this year.

SpaceX has had over 100 successful space missions so far. Its Crew Dragon capsule delivered two as to the International Space Station in 2020.

Collaboration with NASA

Blue Origin's Blue Moon lunar-Lander project was awarded $579 min in April 2020 by NASA.

SpaceX's Starship moon-lender project was awarded $135 min in April 2020 by NASA.

Crewed Missions

Blue Origin is currently testing its New Shepard booster and capsule spaceship that aims to take space tourists aboard by April this year.

SpaceX is targeting the fourth quarter of this year to launch the first all-commercial astronaut mission to Earth's orbit, called Inspiration4.