The State of the Billionaire Space Race

Blue Origin is going slower than SpaceX, but it also nailed a massive rocket launch on the first try. Jeff Bezos is back in the space race.

Photo collage of Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin rockets and satellites
Photo illustration by Connor Lin / The Daily Upside, Photos by Blue Origin and Daniel Oberhaus via CC BY 4.0

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In the early hours of Thursday morning, Jeff Bezos touched the face of God. We are referring of course to the launch of Blue Origin’s 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket, which took off and successfully reached orbit, the first of his space exploration company’s spacecraft to do so. 

The launch marked an important milestone for Blue Origin, which Bezos founded 25 years ago, in what is expected to be a pivotal year for the centibillionaire’s space ambitions — not only has New Glenn successfully blasted off for the first time, but Amazon’s satellite program Project Kuiper is racing (after many delays) to finally fling some satellites into the sky. Meanwhile, a new president with remarkably close ties to Bezos’ biggest rival in the billionaire space race, Elon Musk, is about to take office. With Musk’s political capital rocketing, and with SpaceX demonstrably far ahead of Blue Origin in terms of launches and presence in space, can Bezos bring some competition back to the billionaire space race?

The Space Turtle and the Hare

Blue Origin made a big splash four years ago when it propelled its founder into what is technically space. Bezos climbed aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket in July 2021 alongside three other passengers, and the rocket completed an 11-minute trip up to the Kármán line — the invisible border high above the Earth that separates our planet’s atmosphere from outer space. It was a successful proof of concept for the rocket, and an even more successful PR stunt, as Bezos had technically visited space before Musk.

But since then, Blue Origin has been far less prolific than Musk’s SpaceX when it comes to rocket launches: 

  • Blue Origin has completed 27 rocket launches since it was founded. 
  • That’s pretty much an also-ran showing when you consider SpaceX completed 134 launches of its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy spacecraft in 2024 alone, according to SpaceNews

Blue Origin has had to grapple with some delays, but it’s hard to say whether it’s been slow-goings or SpaceX is just going really, really fast. “We don’t have a precedent for how things are going to be going as all of this funding is being pushed to the commercial sector by government,” Dr Jill Stuart, an expert in the law and politics around space at the London School of Economics, told The Daily Upside. “Having said that, the numbers don’t lie,” she added. “SpaceX clearly is launching a lot more successfully. They have been faster.” 

But, as any Aesop fan will tell you, slow and steady has its benefits — and Blue Origin’s mascot is literally a turtle. John Conafay, CEO and co-founder of space startup Integrate Space, said that although Blue Origin has been slow to launch its first orbital rocket in New Glenn, it has also achieved an incredible feat in having a successful orbital launch on the very first try. “The fact they were able to make it orbital with such an incredible machine on the first attempt is mind-blowing,” Conafay said. Despite Blue Origin’s reputation for slow but methodical work, Conafay said the industry felt an uptick in energy when the company brought in Dave Limp, formerly an Amazon executive, as CEO in December 2023.

Bezos’ Big Year 

The successful launch of New Glenn this Thursday enabled Blue Origin to kick off 2025 with a big win, although not an unmitigated one. The rocket’s booster, which the company one day hopes to make reusable, failed to land. 

Nailing reusability is something that private space companies are chasing, as it can massively lower costs. Conafay said Blue Origin’s next big challenge is getting New Glenn back to the launch pad. “The first launch is spectacular, but it’s […] much more important when it’s followed quickly with another successful launch, and another successful launch. The ability to get this to a productized launch vehicle that can launch every month, every week, is the next giant leap for the company.”

Meanwhile, Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite program, which aims to compete in the same space (literally) as SpaceX’s Starlink, is eyeing early this year for long-delayed launches. Just as with rocket launches, SpaceX is lightyears ahead of Amazon when it comes to actually placing satellites in orbit. There are currently over 6,900 Starlink satellites zipping around the Earth, compared with zero from Kuiper. But Amazon wants to hit the ground running once the satellites are up there; a regulatory filing in the UK shows it wants to start providing internet in the country over the next one to two years.

Space Politics

Not only do Blue Origin and Amazon have some ground to make up if we want a proper billionaire space race, but 2025 also brings a new challenge for Bezos. Donald Trump will be inaugurated tomorrow, and Musk remains one of his closest allies. The question hovering over America’s private space industry is now: Will SpaceX be able to cement its dominance in NASA contracts thanks to Musk’s political capital?

Both Stuart and Conafay were optimistic that a close alliance with the president doesn’t necessarily give Musk an upper hand, in large part because of the systems set up around competition and NASA contracts. “The realities of [US] checks and balances are going to be pretty harsh,” Conafay said. Stuart added that while presidents have some say over the size of NASA’s budget and some top-line influence over big goals like going to the moon or Mars, they don’t have granular control over who gets which contract.

Bezos has, in public at least, brushed those concerns aside, saying he doesn’t believe Musk will use behind-the-scenes influence to give SpaceX a leg up. “Elon has been very clear that he’s doing this for the public interest and not for his personal gain. And I take him at face value,” Bezos told Reuters.

Bezos also told Bloomberg he’s not worried because he thinks demand for private-sector space launches will be so great that one company won’t be able to monopolize the business. Stuart believes that’s true, saying, “I do know for sure that there is space for both of these companies […] I think they’ll have plenty of business to fill their bookings.”

Conafay was slightly less bullish on whether demand will scale the way Bezos claims it will. “Of course I want to say yes, but I think the space industry deludes itself a bit with this claim,” he said, “There were 15 pure commercial launches for SpaceX over the past year or two, and for me, that doesn’t signal unlimited demand. The demand is coming from their own [satellite] constellation needs.” One source of commercial launches for Blue Origin could of course be Project Kuiper, a perfect example of vertical integration. Make that extreme vertical integration. Plus there is a new generation of private sector space stations waiting for lifts, joining the more traditional customers for space launches: government space agencies, and the military.

Silver Lining: There might be one small advantage to be found for Blue Origin in Musk’s new political positioning. Since getting close to Trump, Musk has antagonized some foreign governments, such as the UK. We won’t go into all the back and forth between Musk and the UK’s political class, but the country’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported earlier this month that Project Kuiper has been on a charm offensive with the country’s Ministry of Defence, lobbying for military contracts.

As Bezos also pointed out in comments to Reuters, the space industry works on much longer timelines than a single presidential term. So don’t count Blue Origin and Bezos out of the billionaire space race yet. They’re just getting revved up.