Implanting villages on Mars, installing colonies in orbit around the Earth, making space accessible to tourists, there are no limits to the space ambitions of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. The documentary Musk vs Bezos: The New Star Wars summarizes the commercial struggle between two of the richest men on the planet to conquer space.
We spontaneously associate Jeff Bezos with the e-commerce giant Amazon, the company that made his gigantic fortune. The name of Elon Musk has long been associated mainly with Tesla electric vehicles – and with untimely declarations. This is only the most visible side of their activities.
Bezos and Musk have had a passion for space exploration since childhood, we learn in Musk vs Bezos: The New Star WarsFrench production presented on the show Great reports Tuesday, on ICI RDI. fed to comic booksseries and science fiction films, the two extremely wealthy entrepreneurs cherish wild dreams: one wants to start colonizing Mars by 2030 and the other, to put into orbit constructions where hundreds of thousands of people could live. ‘humans…
IMAGE FROM MUSK VS BEZOS: THE NEW STAR WARSPROVIDED BY RADIO-CANADA
Carried by a classic narration, the French documentary goes back to the sources of the companies Blue Origin and Space X. The first was founded in 2000 by Bezos, who sought to keep it secret. The other was set up by Musk in 2002 and he invested more than half of the $180 million in it from the sale of his PayPal shares. The entrepreneur born in South Africa being more fond of publicity, he has never hidden his ambitions.
The objective of the two men? Establish themselves as private partners with whom NASA could collaborate for manned missions.
A not entirely friendly race then begins between the two entrepreneurs: who would be the first to develop a habitable rocket capable of landing vertically? Then, who would be able to offer the best lunar module for resuming manned travel on our satellite?
PHOTO JOE SKIPPER, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Jeff Bezos was part of the crew of the first manned flight of his rocket New Shepardin July 2021.
Space X eventually capped Blue Origin and established itself as both NASA’s chosen space carrier and the one that will deliver astronauts to the Moon. However, Bezos prevails in another potentially very lucrative field: space tourism. Since the first manned flight of his rocket New Shepard in July 2021, Bezos sent nearly 30 people to experience brief moments in orbit, including William Shatner, Captain Kirk of Star Trek, a series that marked his childhood.
Musk vs Bezos: The New Star Wars insists on the technological prowess and the ambitions of the two businessmen, but also addresses what their desire for conquest means for humanity, that is to say the beginning of the privatization of space exploration. A new era that is shaking up the geopolitical and financial chessboard: the successes of Space X are indeed pulling the rug out from under the feet of the Russian and European space agencies. The export of capitalism to space also raises questions about social inequalities. If Musk wants to colonize Mars, the Earth is suffering and could become uninhabitable. If the ambitions of the two entrepreneurs materialize, who will be able to afford this life elsewhere that they dangle?
Tuesday, 8 p.m., on ICI RDI