Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, two of the three richest men in the world, are engaged in a stratospheric showdown to dominate space, and the outcome could decide the future of moon travel and even AI infrastructure.
In light of Artemis II’s successful mission earlier this month, which saw astronauts fly by the moon for the first time in 50 years, both Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’s Blue Origin have turned their attention away from other projects to prepare for future lunar missions. Both companies were awarded multibillion-dollar contracts from NASA years ago to develop lunar landers for two future Artemis missions that plan to land humans on the moon by the end of the decade for the first time since 1972.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX versus Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin
SpaceX is developing its Human Landing System, an ambitious lander that at 165 feet tall, or 15 stories, is larger than any that has been previously made and will use an elevator to transport both astronauts and cargo to the lunar surface from the crew cabin near the top of the lander.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin is developing its Blue Moon lander. Although it looks more like a traditional lander, it is also technologically advanced. It will reportedly be equipped with lidar sensors that will map the moon’s surface to avoid hazards and find the flattest landing area, according to Space.com. Both companies’ landers are designed to be reusable, which is meant to cut down on the cost of future moon missions.
The stakes for SpaceX and Blue Origin are high. Whichever lunar lander is ready first and is successfully tested will ultimately help the U.S. beat out China by landing astronauts on the moon before the world’s second largest economy plans to do so in 2030.
The first test will be the Artemis III mission, scheduled for mid-2027, which will potentially test both SpaceX and Blue Origin’s landers—if they are ready on time. As part of the mission, astronauts will launch into low earth orbit aboard a rocket carrying NASA’s Orion capsule, similar to the one used for the Artemis II mission. Provided everything goes as scheduled, both SpaceX and Blue Origin will separately launch their landers into space to test their docking ability with the Orion craft. This will be the first test of a process that is key to the Artemis lunar landings in 2028. During the lunar landings, the Orion capsule and moon lander will launch separately and dock in lunar orbit before the astronauts descend to the moon’s surface.
This first competition will also bring NASA closer to establishing a permanent presence on the celestial body.
NASA last month announced a phased plan to build a permanent lunar base and outlined a strategy for crewed surface landings every six months to build up the infrastructure for a moon base following the first lunar landings in 2028. The efforts are part of a push by NASA to establish a human presence on the moon’s south pole that “will strengthen American leadership in space, usher in scientific discoveries, and serve as the proving ground for crewed Mars missions,” according to a NASA presentation.
While Musk’s SpaceX was founded in 2002, two years after Blue Origin, the company is, in many ways, light years ahead of competitors. It was the first to develop a commercially proven reusable rocket, the Falcon 9, which since its first successful mission in 2010 has emerged as a lodestar for the industry. SpaceX used the Falcon 9 in 165 launches last year, breaking its record for launches from the year prior while making up 85% of all American orbital launches, according to Space.com. It has also used the Falcon 9 to amass the biggest satellite fleet ever with 10,000 satellites in orbit to power its Starlink satellite internet service.
Despite these achievements, Bezos is betting Blue Origin will win by moving slowly and steadily.
The company completed its first orbital launch with its New Glenn rocket in 2025 and successfully reached orbit, although its booster wasn’t recovered to be used again as was planned. In November, the company successfully landed its booster back on earth after helping launch two probes to Mars as part of NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (Escapade) mission.
AI infrastructure in space
As AI continues to accelerate on earth, both Blue Origin and SpaceX are exploring the idea of moving the infrastructure that powers it to space. While the idea is still in its early stages, with more powerful solar arrays in the future, space data centers would have the advantage of harnessing cleaner solar energy, Jeff Thornburg, a SpaceX veteran and CEO of Portal Space Systems, previously told Fortune. Far above the earth, these future floating data centers would also be free from the regulations and myriad protests against data centers companies have faced when building infrastructure on earth.
Still, it’s unclear whether it’s feasible to put AI data centers in space. The technical and financial challenges are staggering, especially when launching hardware into orbit is far more expensive than building AI infrastructure on earth. And yet, both SpaceX and Blue Origin are already making moves to prepare, just in case.
SpaceX has already filed plans with the Federal Communications Commission to launch up to 1 million satellites with AI computing ability into space. Blue Origin, for its part, asked the FCC last month for permission to launch nearly 52,000 satellites into space that are capable of AI computing.
“Orbital data centers are the most efficient way to meet the accelerating demand for AI computing power,” SpaceX wrote in its filing.
As Bezos predicted at a tech conference in Turin, Italy, last year, in the coming decades, the next frontier for AI could be off-planet.
“Space will end up being one of the places that keeps making earth better. It already has happened with weather satellites. It’s already happened with communication satellites,” he said. ”The next step is going to be data centers and other kinds of manufacturing.”
