A large mural welcomes those who enter Van Horn, a remote corner of Texas that grew up in the shadow of Jeff Bezos' space dreams that today promise to become a little more real. In the foreground, he stands out, the founder of Amazon, smiling in his blue overalls, the earth behind him together with the outline of his Blue Origin, prototype of the caravels hurled towards the New World, the adventure that begins today with a leap over the Karman line, 100 kilometers above the earth's crust, the border where by convention the actual space begins, which Richard Branson, the first tourist beyond the atmosphere, did not even touch a week ago.
But it is certainly not the race with Virgin's billionaire what matters to Bezos, freshly retired from the role of CEO of the e-commerce giant. “We are building a road to space – he declared before leaving – where we will achieve great things, solving the problems of the earth”. Or even something more because, as he said on another occasion “Once we leave the solar system there will be room for trillions of men. Which means that thousands of Einsteins and thousands of Mozarts will be born”. In short, how visionary (and optimistic) the genius adopted at an early age by a Mexican teacher is no joke. Together with that spirit of adventure that will lead him, at nine local time (15 pm in Italy), to embark on Blue Origin to be catapulted by the New Shepard rocket, sixty feet high, into space.
The great adventure will last 11 minutes. Together with Bezos, 57, will be his brother Mark e Wally Funk, 82 years old, a NASA veteran who, at the time, was excluded from space missions because she was a woman. Complete the team Oliver Daemen, 18 years old, son of a hedge manager. It is probably him, the father, who gave up flying "due to previous commitments" by turning to his son the $28 million ticket, a figure which, according to Richard Branson's estimates, will soon drop to a few million per capita, allowing the development of a thriving tourist industry in space. Moreover, only one of the strands of a market which, according to Morgan Stanley, is destined by 2040 to be worth a thousand billions of dollars a year between trips to the lunar surface (soon routine), exploitation of mines on asteroids and tourism above the clouds.
But all this will happen after the first time today. Three minutes after take-off, Blue Origin passengers will experience the thrill of weightlessness and will enjoy a truly unique view, guaranteed by the fact that the windows cover more than a third of the spacecraft, truly ensuring an exceptional overview. Time two minutes and the return journey will begin: fasten your seat belts tightly to support the impact with the return of gravity. After 7 and a half minutes the parachutes (three in all) will come into action and will slow down the descent of the capsule up to one mph in preparation for landing. An arrival point, for now, to which Bezos has dedicated no less resources and attention than he did to kick off Amazon.
Since it was founded in 2000, Blue Origin has cost Bezos roughly a billion dollars a year in capital, and he has created a small empire with 3.500 employees, with a space base in Texas, several factories between California and Alabama plus the headquarters in Seattle. All entrusted to the guidance of Bob Smith, former Aerospace manager at Honeywell.
In short, an army called to front the enemies of Space X, the army set up by Elon Musk which aims at a no less heroic (and/or crazy) enterprise. “We men – says the founder of Tesla – have two possibilities: to stay on earth waiting for the event which, sooner or later, will cause our extinction and which, rest assured, will arrive. Or become a multi-planetary species. I will work to make the first step possible, the landing on Mars. To stay there."
Meantime Musk has made tremendous progress by lowering the cost of space missions, making great progress on the reuse of rockets and spacecraft and, above all, initiating a system of the Internet through space with the launch of dozens of satellites that promise to soon cover the entire Earth's surface . Strengthened by these records, Musk has become the privileged interlocutor of NASA, with which it has stipulated 52 contracts in recent years for a total of 2,8 billion dollars, including the construction of the vehicle to travel on the satellite, a contract contested by Bezos which has so far received orders from the space agency for only 500 million dollars . The matter is over for the courts and will be decided on August 4th.
It is not the only critical point: not everyone likes the space race between billionaires. "But how can we watch impassively - writes the former Clinton-era Minister of Labor, Robert Reich - this challenge between billionaires chasing each other in the clouds while the earth burns beneath them?". The Guardian also warns the world of the environmental risks of the Space Grand Prix. Today the amount of C02 emitted into space is lower than that of aviation, but the ratio could change soon if missions multiply at the projected rate of 17,5% more per year.
