Here’s the brutal Truth: Elon Musk won. Jeff Bezos Lost

This is a story about Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and their epic head-to-head battle. It’s the kind of thing that inspired my free and related e-books: Jeff Bezos has no regrets and Elon Musk has big plans. You can download both here.

Late Friday afternoon, while Musk and Bezos waited, the tea leaves were read, the verdict was given and the winner was declared.

It will be Musk’s SpaceX, not Bezos ‘Blue Origin, that will take astronauts back to the surface for the first time since 1972, after SpaceX won a $ 2.89 billion NASA contract, defeating Bezos’ company. and others.

Musk celebrated, as Musk would do, with a tweet: “NASA rules!, “Adorned with rockets, hearts and emoji stars.

Bezos, as far as I could find when I wrote this, has not responded yet – even after he released yesterday a 6,500-word letter from Amazon’s shareholder.

Musk and Bezos have clashed over the years in a brawl, mostly on social media – and have grown beyond mere competition between their companies to become a “full-fledged rivalry,” in his words. Christian Davenport, a Washington Post Reporter and author of Space barons.

Even though Tesla is heading out to sea and as Bezos prepares to give up running the giant company he started in a garage more than 25 years ago, there is something about building the Moon Lander and what it could do. that meant for the future of both companies and both men – not to mention humanity itself – that seems bigger and bolder.

This is despite the fact that the size of NASA’s contract is small compared to the net worth of each person. They won and lost multiples of that amount, on paper, in one day – many times.

Musk, who started SpaceX in 2002 when he was 29, was partly determined to explore space by realizing that rocket technology hadn’t advanced much in nearly 40 years.

“For a self-made entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, this was amazing,” Davenport wrote in his book. “His company’s mantra was: Set bold, almost impossible goals and don’t be discouraged.”

Bezos, about seven years older, says he was first inspired by the memory of the Apollo 11 landing in 1969, when he was just five years old.

He later nurtured his passion for a love of science fiction that led him to question the future of the human race and what was really possible in space.

Their private space returns years ago, probably punctuated by the moment in 2013 when Musk overbid Bezos to purchase NASA’s Launch Pad 39A, from which Apollo 11 and Space Shuttle were launched.

Bezos responded, according to Davenport, by buying Launch Complex 36, which was where NASA’s unmanned missions to Mars and Venus were launched. Davenport also talks about a meeting between Bezos and Musk to discuss their rocket ambitions in 2004 did not go well.

For all their achievements, I think it is fair to suggest that both Bezos and Musk view their space projects as the true keys to their future legacies and the greatest contributions they will make to world history.

That’s why Bezos said he plans to continue investing $ 1 billion a year in Blue Origin, liquidating its Amazon shares. And all of Musk’s companies, according to author Tim Timholz’s book, Rocket billionaires, are “explicitly intended to promote human civilization.”

Maybe because they share this common goal, there is a degree to which rivalry sometimes seems more of a friendly competition, almost older brother / younger brother than a bloody fight.

I remember the way Bezos congratulated Musk and SpaceX after a test of his high-altitude Starship rocket, which eventually exploded.

“Anyone who knows how hard this is is impressed by today’s Starship test,” Bezos posted on Instagram. “Congratulations to the entire @SpaceX team. I’m sure they’ll be back soon.”

However, there is no denying that the return to the moon later in this decade, potentially immediately after 2024, is the short-term space award that is most likely to inspire humanity again and act as an even more launching platform. great for the people, technology, and companies involved.

The race for private space could have begun. But in this early, important, high-profile competition, they went head to head, and Musk is clearly the winner.