{"id":467302,"date":"2026-02-14T01:30:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T01:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/467302\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T01:30:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T01:30:07","slug":"the-billionaire-space-race-is-really-heating-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/467302\/","title":{"rendered":"The Billionaire Space Race Is Really Heating Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the U.S. races China to the Moon<\/a>, two billionaires are locked in a space race of their own. NASA has offered both Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos\u2019s Blue Origin a chance to return astronauts to the lunar surface<\/a>, and the competition just got interesting.<\/p>\n

A bombshell report by Ars Technica\u2019s Eric Berger has revealed<\/a> exactly how Blue Origin plans to beat SpaceX to a crewed Moon landing. Internal documents obtained by Ars reportedly detail the accelerated mission architecture Blue Origin will use to attempt to land astronauts on the Moon without the highly complex orbital refueling SpaceX\u2019s approach requires.<\/p>\n

Gizmodo could not independently verify the contents of the documents Ars reviewed, and Blue Origin did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The rivalry ramps up <\/p>\n

Before we dive into Blue Origin\u2019s new lunar strategy, a bit of context. On Sunday, Musk sent shockwaves through the spaceflight community<\/a> by announcing that SpaceX\u2014a company built on its founder\u2019s dream of colonizing Mars\u2014has pivoted toward building a Moon city instead.<\/p>\n

The move marks a seismic shift in the company\u2019s strategic vision. After all, it was only a year ago that Musk called<\/a> the Moon a \u201cdistraction,\u201d insisting that SpaceX is \u201cgoing straight to Mars.\u201d Still, it\u2019s not altogether surprising, as Musk\u2019s company is currently at risk of losing its Artemis 3 lunar lander contract to Blue Origin.<\/p>\n

The morning after Musk announced SpaceX\u2019s Moon pivot, Bezos posted<\/a> an ominous photo of a turtle peering out from the shadows (this is relevant\u2014promise). As Berger insightfully points out, the image\u2014unccompanied by text\u2014is almost certainly a nod to Blue Origin\u2019s mascot: a tortoise. Bezos has previously explained<\/a> that the tortoise is a reference to \u201cThe Tortoise and the Hare,\u201d one of Aesop\u2019s Fables.<\/p>\n

It appears that in his eyes, Blue is the tortoise that will beat SpaceX\u2014the hare\u2014to a crewed lunar landing through slow and steady development.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Artemis 3<\/a> mission will be the first to return humans to the Moon since the Apollo era. In 2021, the agency contracted SpaceX to build a crew lander for the mission, called the Starship Human Landing System (HLS). NASA originally hoped the lander would be ready in time to launch Artemis 3 by 2024, but significant developmental delays<\/a> pushed the mission back to 2028<\/a> and prompted the agency to reopen the contract<\/a> in October.<\/p>\n

Since then, Blue has emerged as SpaceX\u2019s competitor for the Artemis 3 lander contract. Bezos\u2019s company is actively prepping<\/a> its Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) cargo lander<\/a> for its first test flight, slated<\/a> to launch this year. Its success would pave the way for the MK2 crew lander, and if that vehicle is ready to fly before the Starship HLS, Musk can kiss his Artemis 3 contract goodbye<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin\u2019s new plan <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how Blue Origin plans to pull this off. The documents reviewed by Ars reportedly detail two missions: an uncrewed demo mission and a crewed demo landing.<\/p>\n

Berger reports that the uncrewed flight will require three launches of Blue\u2019s New Glenn rocket. The first two will put two \u201ctransfer stages\u201d (specialized upper stages designed to move a vehicle from one orbit to another) into low-Earth orbit, and the third will put a smaller version of the MK2 lander, called \u201cBlue Moon MK2-IL,\u201d into orbit. These three vehicles will dock to each other and the first transfer stage will boost them into an elliptical orbit around Earth.<\/p>\n

The first stage will then separate and fall back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere. That\u2019s when the second transfer stage will take over, boosting the MK2-IL lander into an elliptical orbit around the Moon. The lander will then separate, descend to the lunar surface, and ascend back into low-lunar orbit.<\/p>\n

The crewed landing will require four New Glenn launches, three to put three transfer stages into LEO and a fourth to launch MK2-IL and a docking port. All four vehicles will dock to the port. The first transfer stage will boost the stack into an elliptical Earth orbit, and the second will push it to rendezvous with NASA\u2019s Orion spacecraft\u2014carrying a crew of astronauts\u2014in a specialized, highly stable orbit around the Moon.<\/p>\n

Orion will dock with MK2-IL to allow the crew to board. The third transfer stage will then move MK2-IL into a low-lunar orbit and separate, allowing the lander to descend to the lunar surface and then ascend to re-rendezvous with Orion.<\/p>\n

Sounds easy enough, right? Not quite. While this approach will not require orbital refueling, Blue Origin still must prove it can pull off complex dockings and deep-space maneuvers it has never attempted before, as Berger notes. So while Blue Origin is aiming for an uncrewed Moon landing later this year\u2014potentially ahead of SpaceX\u2019s 2027 target\u2014both companies remain far from the finish line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the U.S. races China to the Moon, two billionaires are locked in a space race of their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[60074,17179,718,79,193,1513],"class_list":{"0":"post-467302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-artemis-3","9":"tag-blue-origin","10":"tag-nasa","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-spacex"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}