Musk vs. Bezos: Who Will Be Next to Reach the Moon?

Call it "the battle of the billionaires" -- to control access to the moon. Ever since Blue Origin landed its New Shepard space rocket back on Earth after a brief visit to space -- while SpaceX was still trying to land its Falcon 9 on a ship at sea -- billionaires Elon Musk (of  and SpaceX fame) and Jeff Bezos (of Amazon.com and Blue Origin) have been trying to win the space race.

Blue Origin one-upped SpaceX in 2015 by accomplishing the easier task of landing a suborbital rocket on solid ground, while Musk was preoccupied with the trickier mechanics of landing a much faster orbital rocket on choppy seas. A few weeks later, Musk landed a Falcon 9 on land -- just to show he could do that -- before returning his attention to sea landings, which he figured out in 2016. Ever since, these two space billionaires have been making like the Hatfields and the McCoys wearing spacesuits -- launching rockets, landing rockets, and designing new rockets.

Their latest contest centers on the moon and who will get to build lunar landers for NASA astronauts who want to go there.

Continue reading

Source Fool.com