History tends to repeat itself. The space race of the 20th century, between two poles of the World USSR and the USA left unimaginable developments in the aerospace industry. This twenty-year competition launched the first satellite, sent humankind to orbit and landed astronauts safely on the Moon.
These days, the Earth is at the start point of another space race, the Space Race of the 21st century. Ansari XPrize was the first stimulus. This organization offered a prize of $10,000,000 for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft. Company Virgin Galactic founded by Richard Branson won this award for the SpaceShipOne rocket-powered aircraft.
credits to «The Verge — SpaceShipOne»
However, Virgin Galactic wasn’t the monopoly in this field. In 2000, Jeff Bezos founded his own space exploration company Blue Origin and two years later Elon Musk stepped into this competition with “SpaceX”.
The objectives of these companies differ dramatically. The well-known SpaceX is currently planning to open its first colonies on Mars by 2050. “The important thing is that we establish Mars as a self-sustaining civilization”, Musk said in a Clubhouse chat. He has colonialistic views about mars and admits the dangers of this mission: «Honestly, a bunch of people will probably die in the beginning,» barefoot SpaceX founder Elon Musk told XPrize founder Peter Diamandis.
On the other hand, Jeff Bezos is indirectly opposing the idea of colonizing Mars. He plans to build free-floating space pods. Jeff Bezos states, humans will not be living on the other planets, since it will be hard to adapt to the environment. “My friends, who want to move to Mars? I say, ‘Do me a favour, go live on the top of Mount Everest for a year first, and see if you like it — because it’s a garden paradise compared to Mars’’, Bezos stated when he visited the Yale Club in New York City. The Space pods will not have heavy industry since the solar system provides all energy.
The third company Virgin Galactic aims at a different target. Richard Branson wants to make space tourism accessible to everyone.
Regardless of the differences in goals, all companies now working on reusable rockets to cut down the price of delivering 1kg of load to the space. These improvements will result in positive changes in the space exploration field.
— Akbarbek Musayev
