Jeff Bezos has a longstanding rivalry with SpaceX’s Elon Musk, but now his Blue Origin space venture is upping the ante in its spat with fellow soon-to-be space traveler Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic — and the Twitterverse is not amused.
Today’s escalation came in the form of a tweet drawing distinctions between a suborbital ride on Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship and Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipOne rocket plane.
The tweet’s infographic noted that New Shepard would fly above the 100-kilometer (62-mile) altitude that is currently considered the international boundary of outer space, while New Shepard’s target altitude is 50 miles, which is accepted by the Federal Aviation Administration as astronaut territory. New Shepard’s other advantages — including the size of its windows — were noted as well:
From the beginning, New Shepard was designed to fly above the Kármán line so none of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name. For 96% of the world’s population, space begins 100 km up at the internationally recognized Kármán line. pic.twitter.com/QRoufBIrUJ
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) July 9, 2021
The Twitter backlash didn’t take long in coming.
“If you don’t want to lose a LOT of space fans, I suggest you take this piece of trash down NOW!” wrote John Gardi, an engineer who frequently comments on space ventures. “You just lost my support! #BlueOriginSucks!”
“Jeff is seriously pissed off,” Ars Technica’s Eric Berger tweeted.
“Shots fired on space twitter … again,” wrote Jared Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments, who is getting ready for an orbital ride on a SpaceX Crew Dragon set for launch in September.
This latest space spat comes as Branson is preparing to board Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity for a test flight on Sunday, in the company of two pilots and three other mission specialists. Branson says he wants to try out the customer experience in advance of next month’s expected start of commercial operations.
The British-born billionaire had been due to take his flight later in the summer, but the schedule was moved up after Bezos announced in June that he’d be on board New Shepard for its first crewed flight on July 20.
Branson’s move stoked talk of a suborbital space race: Although Seattle tech executive Charles Simonyi already holds the title of first billionaire in space (and in orbit) by virtue of his trips to the International Space Station in 2007 and 2009, Branson is in line to become the first tycoon to take a ride on his own company’s spaceship — upstaging Bezos’ trip.
That title may not rate a red-letter entry in the record books, but the space-race talk plays into the clash of billionaire egos. (Although Branson insists he’s not in a race with Bezos, he couldn’t resist referring to “Jeff Who?” during an CNBC interview.) It also plays into the competition for suborbital space customers.
A recent report estimates that the space tourism market will grow by $5.2 billion in the next four years, with Virgin Galactic as well as Blue Origin, SpaceX and other ventures vying for bigger pieces of the pie.
There’s actually little difference between the suborbital passenger experience at 50 miles vs. 62 miles. Both involve several G’s of acceleration, a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of the curving Earth below the black sky of space. But seasoned entrepreneurs like Bezos and Branson know how valuable marketing can be — and how much operational differences, ranging from safety records to window size, can contribute to consumer choice.
Branson is adding to the glitz, as is his custom, by signing up CBS talk-show host Stephen Colbert as the emcee for Sunday’s SpaceShipTwo live-stream and scheduling the premiere performance of a new song by Khalid after the landing.
If a would-be spaceflier has tens of millions of dollars to spend, an orbital ride in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule is likely to be more appealing. But for less deep-pocketed tourists and researchers, the suborbital rides planned over the next couple of weeks could mark the start of a hard-nosed competition for customers.
“I don’t agree with Blue’s campaign talking points, but also, I’m not their market audience, and I’m not their market,” space policy analyst Jared Zambrano-Stout, who served as chief of staff for the National Space Council during the Trump administration, said in a series of tweets.
“This is exactly what people have been talking about would be the Eden of Commercial Space for decades,” Zambrano-Stout wrote. “Strong and fierce competition between rivals going after every customer anywhere possible, with the government just one of many customers. … Makes me wonder if people actually wanted capitalistic competition, or if they wanted something else.”
Virgin Galactic says it will begin streaming video of Branson’s SpaceShipTwo mission at 6 a.m. PT Sunday via its website and its Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels.
from GeekWire https://www.geekwire.com/2021/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-fuels-feud-richard-bransons-virgin-galactic-suborbital-space-trips/