Free from his daily obligations at Amazon, Jeff Bezos is expected to increase pressure on his space venture, Blue Origin, which faces a crucial year and fierce competition from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, industry sources said.
Bezos, 57, a lifelong space enthusiast and the second richest person in the world after Musk, said last week that he is stepping down as chief executive of the e-commerce company to focus on personal projects.
Blue Origin lagged far behind SpaceX in orbital transport and lost to SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance (ULA) by billions of dollars in US national security launch contracts starting in 2022. ULA is a joint venture of Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp.
Blue Origin is now struggling to win a competition with SpaceX and Dynetics to develop a new lunar module for NASA’s potentially multi-billion dollar effort to return humans to the moon in a few years. Dynetics is owned by Leidos Holdings Inc.
Winning the lunar probe contract – and executing its development – are seen by Bezos and other executives as vital for Blue Origin to establish itself as a desired partner for NASA, and also to put Blue on the road to making a profit, people said.
With limited revenue streams, Bezos has paid off about $ 1 billion worth of Amazon stock annually to finance Blue, which he said in 2018 was “the most important job I’m doing”.
A Blue Origin representative declined to comment, but noted Bezos’ comments last week when he said he was stepping down as chief executive of Amazon.
He told Amazon employees that he would “remain involved in important Amazon initiatives”, but he would also devote time to Blue Origin and various philanthropic and media “passions”.
NASA is expected to sift the lunar module contest for only two companies by the end of April, increasing pressure as Blue Origin works on issues like wasting millions of dollars in purchases and technical and production challenges, said the companies. sources.
One of the development difficulties Blue faced was getting the landing module light and small enough to fit into a commercially available rocket, two people informed of the development said.
Another source, however, said that Blue has modified its design since receiving the initial contract last April and that its current project fits into an additional number of available and future rockets, including Musk’s Falcon Heavy and ULA’s Vulcan.
“It will put Blue Origin in a higher gear,” said a senior industry source with knowledge of Blue’s operations.
Bezos has already transplanted Amazon’s culture into Blue, applying similar “leadership principles” and starting meetings by reading documents in silence, the sources say.
But an industry veteran said Bezos needs to take a practical operational role if he wants to fix a series of problems like bureaucratic processes, missed deadlines, overhead and the turnover of engineers that, according to this source, emerged as Blue Origin seeks the development transition for production in various programs.
A person familiar with the matter said that Bezos does not wish to fully immerse himself in day-to-day operations and would instead prioritize important initiatives and new ventures.
In his latest Instagram posts, Bezos is seen climbing into a crew capsule wearing cowboy boots and sitting in his truck watching a rocket engine test, which he described as a “perfect night!
Bezos against Musk
OS against Musk
Founded in 2000, Blue Origin, based in Kent, Washington, has expanded to approximately 3,500 employees, with large manufacturing and launch facilities in Texas, Florida and Alabama.
Its ambitious portfolio includes the sale of suborbital tourist trips into space, launching heavy cargo services to satellites and the landing module – none of which is yet fully commercially viable.
Recent data shows that Blue has overcome combustion stability problems in its BE-4 rocket engine – another line of business, two sources said. Test engines for the ULA’s inaugural Vulcan rocket are expected to arrive in Cape Canaveral in Florida this week, with first-flight and booster engines arriving later this spring, one added.
In comparison, Musk’s SpaceX, founded two years after Blue Origin, launched its Falcon 9 boosters more than 100 times, launched the world’s most powerful operational rocket – Falcon Heavy – three times and transported astronauts to the International Space Station.
SpaceX said on Thursday that it had 10,000 users on its nascent satellite-based broadband service, dubbed Starlink, that Musk says it will provide crucial funding to develop its starship rocket for missions to the Moon and, eventually, Mars. .
Blue also expects a steady stream of revenue for its New Glenn rocket – potentially set to debut later this year – from the constellation of about 3,200 Amazon satellites dubbed Project Kuiper, the sources say.
Amazon plans to have half the constellation in orbit by 2026, but there is no public timetable for a first launch.
So far, Bezos has dedicated a day of the week to Blue Origin, with conference room meetings replaced in recent months with video calls due to the coronavirus pandemic, the sources said.