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The first attempt by Jeff Bezos' private company, Blue Origin, to launch a rocket into orbit will be a local business opportunity. After getting the go-ahead from US regulators last week, the founder of Amazon is finally looking closer to Elon Musk in providing humanity with a way to escape the borders of the Earth – an achievement that was previously unthinkable for a single, wealthy individual.
Even before Musk's SpaceX in two years, Blue Background he has experienced a delay of years. The successful launch of its orbiting rocket, named New Glenn, will finally carry it beyond its current limited passenger business to the edge of space, pitting the world's two richest men against each other in a private race.
But Blue Origin's late arrival comes as the rocket industry enters a new phase — one that may be more challenging to Bezos' ambitions than it was to make the leap to orbit years ago. Clearly, Bezos' potential victory comes just as his rivals have reached an unprecedented level in Washington politics. Musk's proximity to the incoming US president has caused concern across the tech sector, as rivals worry about how his newfound influence could be used against them.
For his part, Bezos has struggled to contain SpaceX politically. After he lost a bid to build NASA's moon, for example, his company warned that the number of contracts Washington was awarding to SpaceX risked turning it into a monopoly. These days, any legitimate questions of this growing power seem slim.
Musk's influence could be key to shaping local policy in Trump's second term. This could include giving SpaceX a more prominent role in US plans to return to the Moon – something that currently relies heavily on the SLS rocket, a 30 billion project led by Boeing. With one flight so far, the SLS has been all the signs of a white elephantwhich makes it some kind of trick Musk's 'new government operations department' wants to kill.
At the same time, thanks to Musk, the business's rocket economy is moving steadily against new entrants like Bezos. The most obvious challenge comes from SpaceX's combination of its heavy boosters Booster and Star, combined with a large rocket that can carry 150 tons into space, more than three times the capacity of the New Glenn.
SpaceX succeeded in the eye stunt of returning the rocket booster to its launch pad, where it was welcomed by two giant arms. That's a step toward making Starship the first reusable rocket, one that can be recharged and returned to service within hours of its flight.
Most local analysts expect this to happen eventually to drive the cost of earning a living in the area less than $1,000 per kilogram, and possibly less than $500. That compares to the lowest price of $6,000 per kilogram that SpaceX is currently selling. Even without Star, SpaceX has been steadily driving costs by increasing its launch volume. Last year it launched nearly three rockets a week and accounted for more than half of the world's orbital launches. That was a rapid increase from just 33 launched three years earlier, and the kind of repetition that Blue Origin would take years to match.
However, with all the groundwork still to be made, Bezos' rocket company will not lack customers. Demand for space launches is expected to outstrip supply for the rest of the decade, and the US military, for one, is keen to find a reliable alternative to SpaceX launches. And the race to build a communications satellite to rival SpaceX's Starlink is entering a new phase, with Amazon's Kuiper Project among the challengers.
In Washington, relying on two billion for access to space might sound a little better than relying on one. But there seems to be no going back to the old model of aerospace development, when the government took all the control and risks. Nasa estimates the 400mn SpaceX spent on developing the Falcon rocket was a tenth of what it would have paid in the public sector.
The trick for governments now will be to find new ways to manage. That could include new systems like SpaceX's Starshield, a military-grade version of the Starlink network that would give the Pentagon greater leverage. For better or worse, going into orbit seems to be the business of the very rich.