Jeff Bezos’ blue origin targets larger space targets

[ad_1]

Jeff Bezos’ space plans go far beyond the short trip he is scheduled to make there on Tuesday.

The founder of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN has gained 1.59% by pouring billions into its space project Blue Origin LLC over more than two decades, believing that humanity must eventually establish outposts across the solar system.

Immediately, Bezos seeks to operate in a space market that will triple in size to more than $1 trillion in annual sales by 2040, says Morgan Stanley, assuming rapid technological advances enable routine moon landings, asteroid mining, and tourism. satellite.

Blue Origin crew capsule inside. The company has spent years developing rockets, engines, and vehicles. Photo: Blue Origin

His giant leap comes July 20, when Blue Origin is set to launch Mr. Bezos and three others to the edge of space on an 11-minute flight, the first launch with passengers on the company’s New Shepard rocket.

A successful flight could provide traction in the emerging space tourism market, which includes Richard Branson’s biggest challenge to Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. Blue Origin is the winning of large government contracts that provide a steady stream of revenue and lend credibility to the companies that secure them. . Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the official name of Elon Musk’s subsidiary SpaceX, has jumped on Blue Origin to win those deals.

For years, Blue Origin has been building operations and developing a range of rockets, engines, and vehicles. This boost has been triggered by what Mr. Bezos describes as his passion for space. He cited the Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon as a foundational moment for him and referred to science fiction authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and scientist and author Carl Sagan in their letters.

Launch of the new Shepard missile. Photo: Blue Origin

“If we were in the solar system, we could have a trillion people in the solar system, which means we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins,” Mr. Bezos said during a speech two years ago. To that end, Blue Origin could lower the cost of space launches, in part. By developing reusable missiles, Mr. Bezos said.

The Amazon founder’s speech was accompanied by significant financial commitments. Mr. Bezos revealed that he sold $1 billion of Amazon stock annually to fund Blue Origin.

After founding Blue Origin in 2000, Mr. Bezos began acquiring hundreds of thousands of acres of land in West Texas for the company in the early part of that decade, telling a newspaper in the area in 2005 that he wanted to build a missile launcher on his facility.

Now, in addition to the launch site in Texas, the company has facilities in Florida, California, Alabama and Washington, D.C., as well as headquarters outside of Seattle. It employs more than 3,500 people, including CEO Bob Smith, a former CEO of Honeywell International Inc.’s aviation unit. Privately owned Blue Origin does not release financial statements.

Howard McCurdy, a professor at American University who has written about space and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said Bezos “is doing what he did with Amazon, which is rolling every nickel he can get into capital equipment and innovation.”

Richard Branson successfully flew to the edge of space on Sunday, and Jeff Bezos wasn’t too late. But the billionaire founders’ spacecraft, flight logistics, and altitude have some differences. Image caption: Laura Kamerman

But SpaceX has gained a deeper footing with space-related agencies in Washington. NASA and the Pentagon have spent $2.8 billion tied to 52 major contracts won by the company led by Mr. Musk over the past 14 federal fiscal years, according to the Federal Spending Database. They spent $496.5 million in 33 contracts that Blue Origin won during that time.

Blue Origin did not respond to questions about competition with SpaceX or its plans to work with government agencies. Mr. Smith has said in the past that the company wants to get business with such clients.

The two companies are arguing over a deal to build a lunar lander for a planned flight in 2024. The Apollo 11 lunar lander reached the moon in 1969 on July 20, the same date as Mr. Bezos’ scheduled space flight on Tuesday. NASA awarded SpaceX the landing contract in April, but Blue Origin protested that decision with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a move that could lead to NASA re-introducing the contract.

The accountability agency is expected to issue a decision on the Blue Origin case by August 4. Leidos Holdings Inc.’s Dynetics unit also competed. on the probe and lodged a protest.

SpaceX is now the most productive launch platform, sending 23 rockets so far this year, according to Federal Aviation Administration data covering authorized launches. Its reusable rockets help lower the cost of access to space, a strategy also pursued by Blue Origin, which has completed nine such launches since late 2017.

“They need to have a track record,” said Marco Caceres, a space analyst at space consultancy Teel Group, referring to Blue Origin.

The New Shepard rocket set to soar Tuesday is designed for tourist flights into suborbital space, with a six-person gumdrop-shaped capsule and windows that extend 3.5 feet by 2.3 feet on either side. Along with the founder of Amazon, the passengers of the plane are Mark Bezos, brother of Mr. Bezos. Wally Funk, an 82-year-old pilot who graduated in the 1960s from the Women’s Astronaut Program; and Oliver Daemon, an 18-year-old Dutch student, who is the company’s first paying customer.

The company is also developing the New Glenn rocket, a 321-foot vehicle designed to use seven main engines to lift large payloads into orbit. In February, Blue Origin said it had made progress on several hardware components for the rocket and that it was targeting the first flight of New Glenn at the end of next year.

Blue Origin has struck deals to push its technology into the space market. The company is developing a new rocket engine for the United Launch Alliance, which launches satellites for the Pentagon and US spy agencies. The engine, which will replace the Russian-made engines in use now, is behind schedule. Last week, NASA said Ultra Safe Nuclear Technologies, a Seattle company, would join Blue Origin and General Electric Co.

“The aspirations of Blue Origin are to become a company like SpaceX, like Boeing, like Lockheed Martin,” said John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

Write to Micah Maidenberg at [email protected] and Doug Cameron at [email protected]

Copyright © 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. all rights are save. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

.

[ad_2]