Billionaire Space Race: Everything You Need To Know 🚀
Happy Sunday Futurists!
Everyone wants to take meme stocks to the moon, but what about taking humans to Mars?
In light of Richard Branson's historic spaceflight on July 11, we're diving into the billionaire space race, which might be more competitive than the Tokyo Olympics (which start on Friday btw).
If your genius friend sent this to you, subscribe here.
Story
The Billionaire Space Race
In May 2019 (we know, it seems like an eternity ago), Jeff Bezos announced his ambitious plan to send astronauts to the moon by 2024.
For reference, there have only been 12 people to ever step foot on the moon.
But that's just the beginning of his plans. Bezos and other billionaires like Elon Musk and Richard Branson all have visionary agendas to find a new home for humans.
They have all cited environmental concerns as reasons for looking into space real estate. Population trends aren't helping the environment either, so they might be on to something here. And, with no real end in sight, they might as well get a head start on exploring different options to Earth.
Musk believes that the human race will be multi-planetary, and he hopes to protect the planet from extinction or planetary collapse. Similarly, Bezos claims that he wants to save the Earth and that relocating humans may help.
Musk, Bezos, and Branson are all making separate pushes to commercialize space travel and investigate the possibility of creating an alternate home for humans.
The Billionaire Space Race began in June, when Blue Origin founder, Bezos, announced his plans to explore the stars on July 20th. However, Branson's competitive nature outdid Bezos by completing the mission on July 11th, making him the first billionaire to travel to space.
While their goals are similar, their missions are different. Branson's mission was completed on the VSS Unity. The mothership, the VMS Eve (above), took off from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and released the VSS Unity at 45,000 (8.5 miles) feet in the air. From there, the Unity took care of the rest, traveling 41.5 miles and entering space.
NASA defines the beginning of space at 50 miles above sea level, and that is where Branson and his team of two pilots and four mission specialists spent four minutes of weightlessness. The entire trip lasted about an hour, and the VSS Unity landed (similar to a plane landing) safely back in New Mexico.
Bezos's mission will use their New Shepard rocket, a more traditional space rocket. The rocket will take off from Van Horn, Texas, on its first-ever crewed flight.
At the top of the rocket is a fully autonomous six-person capsule that will hold these four people:
Jeff Bezos
Mark Bezos, Jeff’s brother
Wally Funk, an 82-year-old pilot with space training
Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old student at the University of Utrecht (Gen Z made it)
Blue Origin's New Shepard Rocket will travel to space on July 20.
The insane speed of the rocket will launch them into space in just three minutes. They will land 62 miles up in the air -- 12 more than Branson (Bezos gets bragging rights). At that point, the capsule will separate from the rocket and will briefly float around for 2-3 minutes. Then the capsule will return, landing with parachutes.
But what is the point of all this? All this time and money spent for just 3 minutes in space?
For starters, it's a credibility and validity establisher. Sending the two billionaire founders into space provides a sense of safety for anyone who may have been thinking of completing a similar mission. Sure, it is great to see that it can be done, but at the rumored price tag of $500,000 per ticket, it's hard to understand where this is all coming from.
This is just the first step in investigating space as a viable option for humans to live.
However, at the same time they are trying to save the planet, these trips are also hurting the environment. Bezos and Musk have stated that these trips are similar to those of cross-country airplane trips. However, the trips to space max out at six people and travel for only 10 minutes in Bezos’s case.
There is still a lot of work to be done, but we remain optimistic about the future of space travel.
With Elon Musk planning on launching an all-civilian crew into orbit later this year, you and your kids may swap your spring break trip to Miami Beach for a trip to explore the stars.
Nonetheless, it is one small step for these billionaires, one giant leap for space tourism.
Our Future Profile
Taylor Hurley
This section is part of a new series highlighting all of the crazy ambitious young leaders we have on this newsletter! Every week, a new member of our 3.5K+ audience will answer a few questions!
1) The Backstory: I'm Taylor Hurley. I graduated from the University of Michigan in 2021 and now work at Bain & Co in Chicago and I co-founded Brassi.
2) Life or Work Hack: Create a big 3 for every day and week. For the week, these are 3 larger goals you need to get done. For the day, these are the top 3 priorities to make sure your week's 3 get done.
3) #1 Content Rec: How I Built This Podcast and the book, Atomic Habits.
4) Advice: Start something! You don't know what you don't know - starting a business will show you what you don't know, and then force you to figure it out.
5) Follow me: LinkedIn, Instagram
This section is open to all readers! Do you want to be featured in our next profile 3.5K subscriber audience? Just fill out this form!
Our Future Quiz
(Answers at the end)
If we're forwarded this email, subscribe here.
Want to sponsor this newsletter with your internship opportunity, event, story, or product? Write to us here.
Written by: Jimmy Sikorovsky
Designed by: Elaine Su
Answers to the Quiz:
"Fact of the Week" Lie: Number 3 -- Infectious disease expert agrees with Biden that platforms like Facebook are actually 'killing people' with Covid misinformation.