The Amazonification of space

Bezos, Branson launch push from private firms seeking to shoot for stars — and beyond

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Mark Bezos, left, and billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and space tourism company Blue Origin, applaud as fellow crew member Wally Funk describes their flight experience Tuesday from the spaceport near Van Horn, Texas. Tony Gutierrez/AP

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By David Streitfeld and Erin Woo The New York Times

The anniversary of the Apollo moon landing marked one small step for space travel but a giant leap for space billionaires.

Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson demonstrated this month that soaring up to the near reaches of the sky appeared safe and, above all, a lark. The planet has so many problems that it is a relief to escape them even for 10 minutes, which was about the length of the suborbital rides offered by the entrepreneurs through their respective companies, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.

But beyond the dazzlement was a deeper message: The Amazonification of space has begun in earnest. What was once largely the domain of big government is now increasingly the realm of Big Tech. The people who sold you the internet will now sell you the moon and the stars.

All of this space activity is the start of something new but also a replay of the 1990s. At the beginning of that decade, the internet was government property devoted to research and communication for a few. By the end, thanks to Bezos more than anyone, it was a place for everyone to buy things. Over the next 20 years, tech grew up and became Big Tech, provoking bipartisan fears that Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple are now too powerful.

Outer space might now be embarked on a similar journey from frontier to big business.

For decades, NASA did not get enough funding to do anything as epic as the Apollo program. The Trump administration decreed a return to the moon by 2024. The Biden administration has endorsed the goal but not the date. If it happens at all, it will be with the assistance of companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. In contrast to the Apollo project in the 1960s, the next trip to the moon will be outsourced.

A swelling ecosystem of startups is attempting to commercialize space by building everything from cheaper launch technology to smaller satellites to the infrastructure making up the “pickaxes and shovels” of space’s gold rush, as Meagan Crawford, a managing partner at the venture capital firm SpaceFund, puts it.

“People are looking around going: ‘There’s this robust space industry. Where did that come from?’ ” Crawford said. “Well, it’s been built methodically and purposefully, and it’s been a lot of hard work over the last 30 years to get us here.”

Investors poured $7 billion into funding space startups in 2020, double the amount from just two years prior, according to the space analytics firm Bryce Tech.

The first space race pitted a brash can-do U.S. government against a charmless Soviet Union. The Americans won that competition, although critics argued that it was all a mistake in an era when so many domestic issues needed attention and money.

This time? Pretty much the same, although now it’s personal.

A petition requesting that Bezos not be allowed to return to Earth drew 180,000 virtual signatures.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., tweeted: “It’s time for Jeff Bezos to take care of business right here on Earth and pay his fair share in taxes.”

In an interview Monday with CNN from the launch site, Bezos said his critics were largely right. “We have lots of problems in the here and now on Earth, and we need to work on those. And we always need to look at the future.”