Building and sending rockets to outer space is a capital
intensive business, but two of the richest men in the world,
Bezos and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have invested billions of dollars
over the years to make inroads in this market.
Blue Origin and SpaceX mainly aim to send satellites for
clients into orbit at an affordable price and reuse parts of
rockets to keep costs in check.
Here’s how the two space startups measure up against one
another:

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Elon Musk’s SpaceX
Founded 2000, headquartered in 2002, headquartered in
Kent, Washington Hawthorne, California
Funding Most funds come from Backers include Elon
Bezos, who said in 2017 Musk, Alphabet Inc,
he would sell $1 bln Fidelity Investments,
worth of his Amazon.com and Bailie Gifford. The
Inc stock every year to next round of funding
fund the company. Total is expected to give it
funding and valuation a valuation of at least
have not been publicly $60 bln, according to a
disclosed. Business Insider
report.
Goals Blue Origin, whose SpaceX says its
Latin motto means “step ultimate goal is to
by step, ferociously,” enable people to live
is working towards on Mars.
making civilian space
flight an important Its Starlink broadband
niche in the global satellite internet
space economy, service aims to offer
alongside satellite fast internet speeds to
services and government rural customers with
exploration projects. limited options.
Milestones Blue Origin, yet to SpaceX has had over 100
launch anything into successful space
orbit, has launched and missions so far. Its
landed its suborbital Crew Dragon capsule
rocket, New Shepard, delivered two
more than a dozen astronauts to the
times. It aims to International Space
complete development of Station in 2020.
its much bigger
workhorse orbital
rocket, New Glenn, by
this year.
Collaborat Blue Moon lunar-lander Starship moon-lander
ion with project was awarded project was awarded
NASA $579 mln in April 2020 $135 mln in April 2020
by NASA. by NASA
Crewed- Blue Origin is SpaceX is targeting the
Projects currently testing its fourth quarter of this
New Shepard booster and year to launch the
capsule spaceship that first all-commercial
aims to take space astronaut mission to
tourists aboard by Earth’s orbit, called
April this year. Inspiration4.

(Reporting by Eva Mathews and Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru;
Editing by Ramakrishnan M.)