Bezos vs. Musk: The new billionaire battle for the Moon

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The contest between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos is only going to get more heated now that the two are directly competing for the moon. After years of charting a path to Mars, Musk surprisingly announced this past week that SpaceX is pivoting to the moon, where he wants to build a “self-growing city." That puts him in the same space camp as rival Bezos, who has bet that focusing on the moon would give his rocket company, Blue Origin, an advantage.

The Amazon founder has long extolled the benefits of a lunar base, including setting up factories there. The direct competition promises to stoke an even hotter 21st-century space race—this time between this era’s real superpowers: billionaires. Generations ago, the rivalry between the U.S.

and then-Soviet Union to reach the moon was a spectacle of science that grew out of the Cold War. The desire to win on both sides fueled the costly projects. For years, Musk and Bezos have competed to build their own reusable rockets, win National Aeronautics and Space Administration contracts (including ones for the moon) and grab attention for whose ideas for the stars were more exciting.

Their favored land spots helped divide the wider space community between the moon and Mars. In many ways, it seemed as though Musk was winning. SpaceX has built a dominant launch business and low-Earth-orbit satellite network.

A mission to Mars was supposed to happen this year. A little more than a year ago, Musk was publicly advocating the case for Mars, just ahead of President Trump’s starting a second term and renewed talk about NASA’s moon priorities. “We’re going straight to Mars," Musk posted on X at the time.