Central Players in NewSpace Philosophies Today
Sir Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Max Polyakov, and Jeff Bezos are in the spotlight for striving to make space accessible for everyone. Who are they, and what is behind their endeavors? Let’s take a closer look at today’s most prominent space innovators and explorers.
Central Players in NewSpace Philosophies Today
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s name, obviously, crosses every person’s mind first. Dedicated to the idea of space tourism, Musk created the SpaceX company back in 2002. Space travels have inspired plenty of well-off entrepreneurs since then, including Yusaku Maezawa. The Japanese billionaire has claimed that he plans to be the pioneer tourist of Musk’s Starship spacecraft in 2023. Later on, Musk started working toward using Starship missiles for Mars colonization, which is his priority now. The first Starship’s mission piloted by humans is scheduled in 2020.
Sir Richard Branson
While Elon Musk switches his focus to colonizing Mars, Sir Richard Branson remains faithful to space tourism. Branson has created a Virgin company nearly for everything: music and film recording, racing, IT, mobile connection, even producing alcoholic beverages, and, of course, tourism and transportation. He has taken people in the air with his planes and undersea with his submersibles. Next, he is going to send them to space, and that is what Virgin Galactic is for. Branson plans to set off 2.5-hour voyages for six passengers each. As of now, this company has sold up to a thousand tickets.
Jeff Bezos
Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, is more into colonization. But unlike Musk, Bezos wishes to create settlements on Moon and relocate manufacture that threatens our Earth there. Yet, Bezos’ Blue Origin cooperates with Virgin Galactic in the space tourism area, too. They intend to welcome travelers at the Aurora Station, the first suborbital hotel.
An American entrepreneur of Ukrainian origin, Max Polyakov, holds a special place in this list. His companies Firefly Aerospace and Noosphere Ventures work for preserving the Earth as a good place to live, and all the people inhabiting it. Max Polyakov’s mission of collecting space data, processing, and analyzing it for our mutual future is the reason why space industries are among vital topics these days. With such companies’ help, we can improve geopolitics, for example, or prepare for another natural hazard. Today, Firefly Aerospace is operating the US Air Force Vandenberg SLC-2W in California. This year, after a long time of renovating this base, the first launch will take place there.
Humanity faces new challenges daily. Once we solve some problems, new issues arise. One thing that keeps us going is hope. To a great extent, this hope is connected with space exploration, research, and data analytics.
