62: The Trillion-Dollar Space Race: Musk (Hare) vs. Bezos (Tortoise). Richard Smith compares the space race between Elon Musk's SpaceX ("the hare") and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin ("the tortoise"). Blue Origin operates under the cautious motto Gradatim Ferociter

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 8 November 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

The Trillion-Dollar Space Race: Musk (Hare) vs. Bezos (Tortoise). Richard Smith compares the space race between Elon Musk's SpaceX ("the hare") and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin ("the tortoise"). Blue Origin operates under the cautious motto Gradatim Ferociter, funded by Bezos's personal wealth, aiming to move heavy industry off Earth. SpaceX is driven by Musk's "existential" goal to make humanity interplanetary, operating with urgency. SpaceX ensures independence by funding its ambitious projects, including Starship, through the revenue generated by Starlink.
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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm John Batchelor, and I'm speaking with Richard Smith, writing for Civitas Outlook at Civitas Institute, about a new book by Christian Davenport, Washington Post staff writer.
0:14.2	It's about the contest between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos into low Earth-Earth orbit, into the Earth-Moon system, and perhaps
0:25.3	well beyond that, to the Mars Earth system, and well beyond that.
0:30.9	The contest right now looks to me from the outside, outside, having followed it up to the point
0:36.5	of reusability, to be a
0:38.5	contest between a tortoise and a hair.
0:41.2	The hair has a secret, and the secret is, I think the way you put it, Richard, is the
0:47.3	hair is hungry, or is that correct?
0:49.8	That's my impression, yeah.
0:51.8	And what does that mean?
0:52.9	Translate for us, please.
0:54.5	Sure, SpaceX wants... That's my impression. Yeah. And what does that mean? Translate for us, please. Sure.
0:54.9	SpaceX wants, well, Elon Musk considers it an existential issue that we must become an
1:04.0	interplanetary species because at some point, something is going to happen to Earth.
1:09.2	It could be global warming. It could be a Earth. It could be global warming.
1:11.9	It could be a pandemic.
1:14.2	It could be a meteor strike.
1:16.9	In any case, statistically, he figures life on Earth is going to be in peril at some point.
1:22.4	Therefore, we must have humans living somewhere else sort of as a lifeboat from which we could repopulate the
1:28.9	earth. That could be the moon. He really has his eyes set on Mars, though. He wants to go to Mars.
1:37.6	What is Hungary? I mean, you translated. So I go on to another aspect of SpaceX's success,
1:43.8	which is corporate culture.
	...

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