Will Jeff Bezos win the billionaire space race? NASA astronaut calls the Amazon founder the ‘real deal’ and says he will outshine Elon Musk and Richard Branson
- Astronaut Terry Virts believes it is Bezos that will ultimately win the space race
- He called Bezos a ‘speak softly and carry a big stick kind of guy’
- Bezos set up Blue Origin and is competing with Elon Musk and Richard Branson
- Virts also said the BE-4 engine from Blue Origin wil lbe one of the most important rocket engine of the 21st century
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A former commander of the International Space Station (ISS) believes Jeff Bezos will outshine rivals Richard Branson and Elon Musk in the pursuit of commercial space flight.
The billionaire founder of Amazon set up Blue Origin, a firm which he hopes will one day enable low cost passage to space.
Polarising maverick Elon Musk is often in headlines and Richard Branson’s high-profile Virgin Galactic endeavour has had a spate of recent successes.
NASA astronaut Terry Virts however, believes it is Bezos’ no frills and relatively quiet approach to space flight which will see him distinguish himself above his peers.
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NASA astronaut Terry Virts (pictured) believes it is Bezos’ no frills and relatively quiet approach to space flight which will see him distinguish himself above his peers
A former commander of the International Space Station (ISS) believes Jeff Bezos (pictured) will outshine rivals Richard Branson and Elon Musk in the pursuit of commercial space flight. The billionaire founder of Amazon set up Blue Origin
‘I think Bezos is in it for the long run. He’s not out there on Twitter, he’s not out there talking about himself,’ Mr Virts said in an interview with CNBC.
‘He’s the speak softly and carry a big stick kind of guy.’
The former astronaut lavished praise on the Amazon founder for his approach to the space race but said both Musk and Branson have helped the advancement of science too.
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He said Musk’s enthusiasm and popularity was fantastic for getting people, and particularly children, interested and passionate about space again.
He also pointed out the success of the Falcon 9 rocket as a key turning point in making satellite launches cheaper and more accessible since the Russian Soyuz rocket has become increasingly unreliable.
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The former astronaut (pictured on-board the ISS) lavished praise on the Amazon founder for his approach to the space race but said both Musk and Branson have helped the advancement of science too
WHO IS JEFF BEZOS?
Jeff Bezos is best known as the founder and CEO of online giant Amazon.
Born in New Mexico and raised in Houston, Texas, he went on to attend the prestigious Princeton University and graduated in 1986.
After a decade or so of work on Wall Street, Mr Bezos founded his own company in 1994.
Jeff Bezos was born in 1964 and is founder and CEO of Amazon. He is also the richest person in the world
He initially called his company Cadabra, and then reportedly changed the name to Amazon when a colleague misheard it as ‘cadaver’.
Initially, it was launched as an online book store working out of Bezo’s garage in Seattle but rapidly grew to include a variety of goods and services.
Now, Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world and the most successful website in the world.
In 2018, the company is worth around $900 (£691 billion).
Mr Bezos himself has an estimated net worth of $150 billion (£115 billion).
He has bought and accumulated a variety of different companies and outlets including: Whole Foods, The Washington Post, Twitch and IMDB.
He has a controlling share of 17 per cent in his first company, Amazon.
In 2017, Jeff Bezos surpassed Bill Gates to become the richest person in the world, and the richest person of the modern world.
He has been married since 1994 and has four children.
While he branded Branson ‘cool’, the former ISS veteran called Bezos the ‘real deal’ and said his company, Blue Origin, is ‘legit’.
He added: ‘The BE-4 engine that he is making, I think is going to be the most important rocket engine of the 21st century.’
‘He’s doing things a little bit slower and he is doing it all on his own. Most of his programmes are not with NASA or the government.’
‘I think he has some spare change lying around the couch that he can fund this stuff with.
‘I think he is the long, slow and in the long run he is going to make a real impact in getting to the moon, getting people into space and really impacting the 21st century space economy.’
THE BILLIONAIRE SPACE RACE
Jeff Bezos in front of Blue Origin’s space capsule
Jeff Bezos’ space tourism project with Blue Origin is competing with a similar programme in development by Space X, the rocket firm founded and run by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Virgin Galactic, backed by Richard Branson.
Bezos revealed in April 2017 that he finances Blue Origin with around $1 billion (£720 million) of Amazon stock each year.
The system consists of a pressurised crew capsule atop a reusable ‘New Shepard’ booster rocket.
The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos is pursuing Blue Origin with vigour as he tries to launch his ‘New Glenn’ rocket into low-Earth orbit by 2020.
Whilst Bezos is yet to leave the atmosphere of Earth, despite several successful launches, Elon Musk’s SpaceX programme has already sent the Falcon Heavy rocket into space.
On February 6 2018, SpaceX sent the rocket towards the orbit of Mars, 140 million miles away.
On board was a red Tesla roadster that belonged to Musk himself.
Elon Musk with his Dragon Crew capsule
SpaceX have won several multi-million dollar contracts from Nasa as the space agency hopes to use the rockets as a fast-track for its colonisation of the red planet.
Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic recently successfully conducted a test flight of the Virgin Galactic’s Unity spaceplane.
The flight accelerated to over 1,400 miles per hour (Mach 1.87).
Calling space ‘tantalisingly close’, Branson also said last year that suborbital space in test flights could be happening by this spring.
More than 700 affluent customers to date, including celebrities Brad Pitt and Katy Perry, have reserved a $250,000 (£200,000) seat on one of Virgin’s space trips,
The billionaire mogul also said he expects Elon Musk to win the race to Mars with his private rocket firm SpaceX.
Richard Branson with the Virgin Galactic craft
SpaceShipTwo will carry six passengers and two pilots. Each passenger gets the same seating position with two large windows – one to the side and one overhead.
The space ship is 60ft long with a 90inch diameter cabin allowing maximum room for the astronauts to float in zero gravity.
A climb to 50,000ft before the rocket engine ignites. Passengers become ‘astronauts’ when they reach the Karman line, the boundary of Earth’s atmosphere, at which point SpaceShipTwo separates from its carrier aircraft, White Knight II.
The spaceship will then make a sub-orbital journey with approximately six minutes of weightlessness, with the entire flight lasting approximately 3.5 hours.
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