2023-10-07 19:00:00
Amira Shehata wrote Saturday, October 7, 2023 10:00 PM
The space race between billionaire technology moguls Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos has moved to satellite Internet services, as Bezos’s company, Amazon, launched the first experimental satellites for Internet service, which are the company’s first steps in its plan to compete with SpaceX’s broadband network, called “Starlink.” .
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifted off with a pair of test satellites, beginning a program describing its targets Achieving global Internet coverage With an eventual 3,236 satellites orbiting Earth, Amazon said it plans to start offering the service by the end of 2024.
However, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has a head start over Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns his own rocket company, Blue Origin.
SpaceX launched its first experimental Starlink satellites in 2018 and its first operational satellites in 2019, and has since launched more than 5,000 Starlinks from Florida and California, using its Falcon rockets.
The competition between Musk and Bezos has become known as the “billionaire space race,” according to Musk biographer Walter Isaacson, because space is a “passion” for both men.
The two billionaires reignited their feud by exchanging insults in Isaacson’s biography of the SpaceX founder, which was published last month.
Musk described the Amazon founder as an “amateur” when it comes to space exploration because he did not spend enough time at his company Blue Origin.
But Bezos responded, saying Musk’s employees believed he “rarely knew as much as he claimed,” according to Isaacson’s report.
Former Tesla and SpaceX employees said they believed Musk’s ideas were often unhelpful or problematic, as the book claims.
Their space dispute is nothing new: Musk and Bezos have been fighting over control of space tourism and contracts with NASA for two decades.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin officially secured a $3.4 billion contract with NASA last May, bringing the billionaire one small step closer to putting a man on the moon.
Also, in 2021, Musk’s company SpaceX won $3 billion to help return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972, and Bezos tried in vain to win that contract, then launched an unsuccessful lawsuit to overturn the decision.
Amazon has currently booked 77 launches from European ULA, Blue Origin and Arianespace to deliver thousands of proposed satellites into orbit.
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