 | |
| Author | Christian Davenport |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | PublicAffairs |
Publication date | March 20, 2018 |
| Pages | 336 |
| ISBN | 978-1-61039-829-9 |
The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos is a 2018 book by Christian Davenport. It covers the rise of the commercial space companies Blue Origin, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and SpaceX, led by PayPal and Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk. [1] [2] [3]
Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American businessman, media proprietor and investor. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing company. He is the wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of about US$199.1 billion as of March 2, 2024. He was also the wealthiest from 2017 to 2021, according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes.
A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who has achieved immense wealth through the creation or ownership of multiple lines of enterprise. The term characteristically refers to a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or services are widely consumed. Such individuals have been known by different terms throughout history, such as robber barons, captains of industry, moguls, oligarchs, plutocrats, or tai-pans.
The BFG is a fictional weapon found in many video games, mostly in id Software-developed series' such as Doom and Quake.
Blue Origin Enterprises, L.P., commonly referred to as Blue Origin is an American aerospace manufacturer, defense contractor, launch service provider and space technologies company headquartered in Kent, Washington, United States. The company makes rocket engines for United Launch Alliance (ULA)'s Vulcan rocket and manufactures their own rockets, spacecraft, satellites, and heavy-lift launch vehicles. The company is the second provider of lunar lander services for NASA's Artemis program and was awarded a $3.4 billion contract. The four rocket engines the company has in production are the BE-3U, BE-3PM, BE-4 and the BE-7.
Elon Reeve Musk is a businessman and investor. He is the founder, chairman, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, product architect, and former chairman of Tesla, Inc.; owner, executive chairman, and CTO of X Corp.; founder of the Boring Company and xAI; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the Musk Foundation. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$190 billion as of March 2024, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and $195 billion according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
The Heinlein Prize for Advances in Space Commercialization, generally known as the Heinlein Prize, was founded in 1988 to reward individuals who make practical contributions to the commercialization of space. The Heinlein Prize offers a cash award of $500,000 to one or more individuals for practical accomplishments in the field of commercial space activities awarded by the Heinlein Prize Trust.
Jim Cantrell is an American entrepreneur, mechanical engineer and road racer. He is the CEO and co-founder of Phantom Space Corporation, which aims to build space transportation technology. After working at the French Space Agency CNES and the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, he worked as an independent consultant to aerospace companies for fifteen years and was on the founding teams of SpaceX and Moon Express. Cantrell was SpaceX's first vice president of business development and Elon Musk's industry mentor when SpaceX launched in 2002.
The billionaire space race is the rivalry among entrepreneurs who have entered the space industry from other industries - particularly computing. This private spaceflight race involves sending privately developed rockets and vehicles to various destinations in space, often in response to government programs or to develop the space tourism sector.
The Mars race, race to Mars or race for Mars is the competitive environment between various national space agencies, "New Space" and aerospace manufacturers involving crewed missions to Mars, land on Mars, or set a crewed base there. Some of these efforts are part of a greater Mars colonization vision, while others are for glory, or scientific endeavours. Some of this competitiveness is part of the New Space race.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, launched in March 2012, is a daily ranking of the world's 500 richest people based on their net worth. It features a profile of each billionaire, and includes a tool that allows users to compare the fortunes of multiple billionaires. The index is updated every day at the close of trading in New York.
Starship is an American two-stage super heavy lift launch vehicle under development by aerospace company SpaceX. It is the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown. Starship is intended to be fully reusable, allowing both stages to be recovered after a mission and to be rapidly reused.
Starship HLS is a lunar lander variant of the Starship spacecraft that is slated to transfer astronauts from a lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back. It is being designed and built by SpaceX under the Human Landing System contract to NASA as a critical element of NASA's Artemis program to land a crew on the Moon.
A floating launch vehicle operations platform is a marine vessel used for launch or landing operations of an orbital launch vehicle by a launch service provider: putting satellites into orbit around Earth or another celestial body, or recovering first-stage boosters from orbital-class flights by making a propulsive landing on the platform.
Virgin Galactic Unity 22 was a sub-orbital spaceflight of the SpaceShipTwo-class VSS Unity which launched on 11 July 2021. The crew consisted of pilots David Mackay and Michael Masucci as well as passengers Sirisha Bandla, Colin Bennett, Beth Moses, and Richard Branson.
Meme Man, sometimes also referred to as Mr. Succ or the Stonks guy, is a character often featured in internet memes. He is depicted as a 3D render of a smooth, bald, and often disembodied blue-eyed male head. He was popularized in the mid-2010s by the artist "Special meme fresh", and became a common character in many surreal memes, a genre of internet humor inspired by surrealism. During the 2021 GameStop short squeeze, Meme Man was popularized by users of the subreddit r/wallstreetbets as the face of the "stonks" meme.
On 13 August 2021, Blue Origin filed a complaint to the United States Court of Federal Claims about NASA's award of $2.9 billion to SpaceX. The award was used by the company to further develop Starship HLS, a lunar lander that NASA selected for the Artemis program. On 4 November 2021, the Court of Federal Claims dismissed the complaint, and the accompanying memorandum opinion was titled Blue Origin v. United States & Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Blue Origin's complaint and prior actions have received attention from the news media and spaceflight industries.
Lex Fridman is a Russian-American computer scientist and podcaster. He hosts the Lex Fridman Podcast, in which he interviews guests, which have included prominent figures in various fields, including science, technology, sports, and politics.
The Musk family is a wealthy family of South African origin that is largely active in the United States and Canada. The Musks are of English, Anglo-Canadian, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Swiss descent. The family is known for its entrepreneurial endeavours. Elon Musk was formerly the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$232 billion as of December 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Elon Musk made $175.8 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in October 2002. He was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2 billion. He is the founder, chairman, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, product architect, and former chairman of Tesla, Inc.; owner, executive chairman, and CTO of X Corp.; founder of the Boring Company and xAI; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the Musk Foundation. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$232 billion as of December 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and $182.6 billion according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
 | This article about a book on outer space or spaceflight is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 | This article about a book on business is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
