"Dear Jeff, don't forget that." Monday morning, shortly after dawn, Elon Musk posted a tweet featuring a silver medalist with a huge number two. An eloquent way to remind rival Bezos, Amazon's number one shareholder, that he, the pioneer of Tesla, is the richest man on earth, with assets on the stock market of 222 billion dollars, against "only" 191 billions of the rival. He stuff worthy of an old Mickey Mouse, when Scrooge McDuck and Rockerduck they gave each other a thrashing to contend for primacy.
The example makes sense, because the two richest men on the planet have now launched the gauntlet of the century: one of them, both are convinced, will lead the conquest of space. Bezos, at the head of Blue Origin, is chasing for now. But the founder of Amazon is not the type to give up. As evidenced by the tweet posted on Sunday night in which it reproduces the cover of an old Barron's, dated 1999, in which the most respected US financial weekly explained the reasons why Amazon would not make it big.
The future, the analysts wrote, belongs to integrated groups that sell the products they produce. Not to an online merchant. “I learned then – comments Bezos – that when you believe in something you don't have to listen to anyone. That's the only way you can win." But this time you won't make it, Musk, a Texas citizen for a week, sends him to say, both in protest at the lockdown imposed on factories by California but also to stay close to his latest creation: Starship, the stainless steel monster created by Space X that emerges from the marshes of the Gulf of Mexico with its 33 engines capable of developing twice the power of the Saturn V, the vector that launched the Apollo into space towards the Moon.
Starship, according to Musk's drawings, will be the rocket that will kick off the mission to carry the first men on Mars. But it won't be the only "historic" mission for the South African billionaire inventor's latest creation. Before traveling to the red planet, Starship will pay for itself in large numbers by defeating the competition in space.
In fact, no other carrier will be able to guarantee its performances, capable as it will be of transporting a weight of 100 tons around the earth. And before that, the falcon9, another rocket from the stable of the founder of Tesla, to make a vacuum: thanks to his revolutionary production system, based on 3 D, Musk has practically abolished outsourcing significantly lowering the cost of rockets.
So far, both in Europe and in America, the construction of rockets has often been divided among various suppliers, to satisfy all the national industries or the various lobbies. Musk designs and manufactures everything in house, with a strong saving on prices. Also to the benefit of customers, first of all NASA who calculated that Space X spent 400 million dollars to develop the Falcon 9 rocket, or more or less a tenth of what competitor rockets cost.
So much glory, perhaps too much, according to Jeff Bezos. You risk, is the accusation of him, a harmful monopoly for everyone. In particular, Blue Origin, cut off from the development of the spacecraft for the new moon landing, risks having to stop the development of its prototype, the New glenn, for which it has invested more than 2,5 billion dollars. Hence the appeal of the founder of Amazon: not only Musk risks having an unbridgeable advantage because he will be able to impose his standards on NASA, but, thanks to the cash collected, he was able to start the development of the satellite network capable of distributing the Internet in the space.
Here is the reason for Bezos' bad moods. And of the calm Musk's superiority, convinced of being able to do the en plein in orbit. But in space, according to forecasts, there will undoubtedly be room for at least one other competitor of Tesla's billionaire, ready to pour all the profits of the stars into the construction of his latest, magnificent toy that is rising on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico with the task of taking him to Mars.
