Who will land on the Moon first: SpaceX or Blue Origin?
The 12th launch of SpaceX's Starship spacecraft, last Friday (22), reignited a debate about the dispute between the companies of billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin.
With the takeoff of Starship, Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, created a new chapter in the space race between private companies. The action is part of the businessman's program to develop a fully reusable space system aimed at future missions to the Moon and Mars.
As disclosed, the company hopes to fulfill NASA's plan to use the spacecraft to land astronauts on the Moon by 2028.
At the same time, Blue Origin, the space company owned by American billionaire Jeff Bezos, successfully reused and recovered a booster for the New Glenn rocket in April this year.
New Glenn is at the center of Bezos' space ambitions as he competes with Musk on NASA's Artemis lunar program, in which their respective space companies develop landing modules for the US space agency.
In an interview with CNN Prime Time, astronautics expert Pedro Pallota analyzed Blue Origin's achievement and the context of the competition between Bezos' company and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
According to him, although the landing of the New Glenn rocket was successful, the mission as a whole is considered a failure, as the launched satellite was unable to reach the planned orbit and was lost.
Differences between the companies
The expert highlighted that, although Blue Origin is older (founded in the 2000s) than SpaceX (created in 2002), Elon Musk's company has a much more aggressive approach and a significant advantage in terms of experience.
"SpaceX has been launching orbital rockets since 2007. It has had its successes there for much longer. The fact that SpaceX already has much more of what we call flight heritage, that is, much more knowledge, puts it way ahead", he stated.
In terms of orbital mass, SpaceX is responsible for more than 90% of everything put into space, which could be considered a monopoly.
In addition, the expert recalls that Musk's company is developing Starship, the largest rocket in the world in terms of power, height and mass, which works with a fully reusable system - where nothing that flies is discarded.
Starship Flight
The test flight was the first of the Starship program since October. The company faced several setbacks with its V2 prototype and canceled its first attempt to launch the V3 on Thursday night (21), after problems arose just seconds before the end of the countdown.
Despite the difficulties faced on Thursday (21), the ship's landing took place normally on Friday (22), around 8:35 pm Brasília time, about an hour after takeoff from the Starbase base, in Texas, United States.
*Under supervision of Manuella Dal Mas
Source: CNN