U.S. billionaires race China to moon

The Ares I-X test rocket lifts off successfully from Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP / John Raoux)

WASHINGTON — The space race between U.S. billionaires is heating up, with Elon Musk’s SpaceX planning to build a lunar base and Jeff Bezos pushing Blue Origin’s ambitions as both companies aim to return humans to the moon ahead of a planned mission by China in 2030.

With a planned IPO this year, SpaceX CEO Musk has said in recent podcast interviews and company meetings that he wants to build “Moonbase Alpha” and put a satellite-slinging launch device on the lunar surface. The lunar base would help build up his envisioned AI-computing network of up to one million satellites.

Musk’s intensified drive toward the moon has shifted SpaceX’s aspirational focus from the Mars colonization mission he has pushed consistently since founding the company in 2002. As recently as last summer, Musk said he hoped to launch an uncrewed Starship mission to the Red Planet, calling the moon a “distraction.”

In recent weeks, Bezos’s space company Blue Origin has also put more focus on its own moon program, shuttering its suborbital space tourism business to shift those resources into its Blue Moon lunar lander program ahead of a planned uncrewed mission to the surface this year.

Musk now wants to convince investors that SpaceX will remain the dominant force in space ahead of a planned IPO later this year that could value the company at over $1 trillion.

After a flurry of Musk posts on X this week about a “pivot” to the moon, Bezos posted a black‑and‑white image of a tortoise, recalling Aesop’s fable in which the slow and steady tortoise wins the race against the speedy but impulsive hare. Blue Origin has embraced that fable in its motto “Gradatim Ferociter,” Latin for “step by step, ferociously.”

Executives at other space companies say they also expect to benefit from increased spending on the new moonshot by the U.S. government and its two primary space contractors.

Bezos hot on Musk’s heels

Blue Origin’s uncrewed mission to the moon this year is a precursor for an astronaut landing, part of NASA’s Artemis program which also relies heavily on SpaceX’s Starship.

Seattle-based Blue Origin’s lander last week was shipped to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas for thermal and vacuum testing, a key development step in its path to launch.

Blue Origin and SpaceX are building their moon landers with billions of dollars in funding from NASA, which aims to use them for a series of astronaut moon landings starting with SpaceX’s Starship. NASA landed the first humans on the moon in 1969, and a total of 12 U.S. astronauts walked on the moon as part of the Apollo program that ended in 1972.

NASA sees a return to the moon as practice for future missions to Mars. The agency has pressed the companies to speed up their lunar lander development to win the space race against China, which has targeted its own 2030 moon astronaut landing.

Musk said this week he wants to go a few steps further by building a “self‑growing city” on the moon and launching AI satellites from the lunar surface — part of his broader goal to expand AI computing into space after SpaceX acquired Musk’s xAI this month.

“If the moon becomes a strategic jump-off point, and one that’s important to SpaceX, if they can get there first or early and build out that infrastructure, they might have a say in how that gets used and how they use it,” said Andrew Chanin, CEO at ProcureAM, a space-specialized investment firm.

Ripple effects boost space firms

SpaceX’s Starship rocket has not yet deployed anything into orbit, but has launched 11 times since 2023 and is poised for an upgraded test in a month. The rocket’s upper stage, which acts as the moon lander, faces a 2028 crewed moon landing date that many in the industry see as tough to meet.

SpaceX has many more steps in Starship’s development as a lunar lander, from practicing its novel refueling process in orbit with another “tanker” Starship to reliably landing on the moon’s rugged surface before carrying humans aboard.

Kathy Lueders, who led NASA’s human space operations unit before going to SpaceX to oversee its Starship development site in Texas, said urgency in the SpaceX-Blue Origin rivalry, with Musk now focused more on the moon, helps NASA compete with China.

“With Elon making these statements, that company is now laser-focused on getting back to the moon,” Lueders, now an independent industry advisor, added.

The Musk-Bezos competition is rippling to other corners of the nascent U.S. lunar industry.

“I’ve had 20 investors this week reach out to me,” said Justin Cyrus, CEO of Lunar Outpost, a company that has sent a moon rover to the lunar surface ahead of future plans of building an array of lunar infrastructure.

“There is a very palpable change in mindset from the investment community on the lunar surface over the last two years, and I think Elon’s announcement has made that more pressing,” he said.

(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Joe Brock and David Gregorio)