Musk vs. Bezos: Whose philosophy will get him to space first? | Peter Ward

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The billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are driving the private space sector, however, they both have different motivations and goals for doing so. For Musk, space colonization is a matter of saving the human species — having a Plan B. For Bezos, he believes Earth can be saved and transformed into a "residential only" zone. Goods from industrial manufacturing would be outsourced from space colonies. One big concern regarding Bezos' plan is whether his company's presence in space would someday constitute a monopoly of extraterrestrial industry.

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PETER WARD

Peter Ward studied journalism at the University of Sheffield before moving to Dubai, where he reported on the energy sector. After three years in the Middle East, he earned his master’s degree in business journalism from Columbia University Journalism School. His work has appeared in GQ, Bloomberg, The Economist, and Newsweek. He lives in New York City.

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TRANSCRIPT:

PETER WARD: Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are really driving the private space sector. And they do come from different backgrounds and they do have different space philosophies. Elon Musk is the most swashbuckling adventurer. He just wants to go to Mars and he wants to go because he wants to save the species. He believes in the "Plan B" arguments which says that basically we're all doomed. The Earth is going to come to an end at some point, whether that's nuclear war, and asteroid hits us, disease — any of the above. And he believes that that is going to happen and the best way to preserve humanity, to preserve our species is to make make plan B which would be to make a colony settlement on another planet which we'd live on even if Earth were destroyed.

And he's picked Mars for that. Mars is the obvious option, for logistical reasons. And yeah, so his whole thing is, "Earth is doomed. We need a backup plan. And we're going to go to Mars and set up a settlement there. That's the best way to save the world."

Bezos, on the other hand, he doesn't subscribe to the plan B argument at all. He thinks that the Earth can be saved. He thinks that we're going to be just fine here. But he thinks space can play an integral part of saving the Earth. He essentially wants to make the Earth a residential zone, where only — people would only live here. He wants to move all industry to the moon so we wouldn't have the effects of manufacturing and industry and pollution here on Earth, it would all go to the moon. And this would — the Earth would basically be zoned as a residential only area.

Having said that, Bezos has a reputation with Amazon. He obviously is a very shrewd businessperson. He's the richest man in the world. And he will set up the infrastructure of his company in such a way that he dominates that area. You've seen it with Amazon. He built these warehouses all over America and he absolutely took a stranglehold over the e-commerce market. If he were to do something like that in space, that would be a little bit scary. It would be almost too much power for someone to have in space.

If he set up operations on the moon that he would like to, it would have huge questions of whether this is monopoly, how much control he has, if the whole economy — if the whole industrial sector was based on the moon and Jeff Bezos or only two or three people were the ones that run all the infrastructure and the logistics getting to and from that, that's a huge amount of power all of a sudden for one — for one company and for one man.

So those are the different philosophies. I guess they do kind of reflect their personalities. Elon Musk goes out on Twitter and says, we're going to go to Mars in the next three years. And he kind of knows that those timelines are never going to happen. I don't think he's ever actually said in two years. But it's that kind of deal. He always gives very ambitious timelines.

Bezos, on the other hand, is quiet, reserved. You don't really know what his company is doing until they're ready to make a full announcement. And you get the sense that he's kind of building behind the scenes and will, at some point — I guess he's ever the industrialist. He's going to come out and have everything planned, have all the infrastructure. So yeah, I guess that's the difference between the two.

[izimiger]

Didn’t really answer the title question. Who gets there first?

[borhex]

Elon repeated many times: "beat me to it, I want you to do it"

[doodelay]

Bezos wants to do all resource mining off of earth and have earth become a national park as a top priority.
Elons top priority is to have us become multiplanetary.
I think both are excellent priorities and im glad they differ cause we get to have both at same time

[Curtisthecrumble]

This guy made general well-known statement, and made a lot of assumptive arguments based on nothing but things that have been said before about both individuals. No intuitiveness at all. Might as well have asked some guy to read a section of an article for 3 minutes.

[assaultflamingo.]

1: You didn't answer the question in your title
2: Link a single time Elon ever said any of those "will happen", he always says it's "in case it does"
3: Ambitions timelines yes, but they can be met, Starship is ahead of schedule
4: Not everyone's a good a good presenter, and that's okay, but maybe save the presenting for someone who is

[robomop]

Kind of disagree with the pessimistic description of Musk’s philosophy. He’s a sci-fi nerd. He thinks exploring space would be the greatest adventure ever.

[bottasheimfe]

To be perfectly honest, both philosophies have merit, and I think they should be combined.

[denisbornsek]

The saddest part that rarely anyone notices and works on is that we human beings compete instead of collaborate... especially if we are deemed successful by society...ego... integration is the key, not competition if we are to survive as species.

[FrancescoDiMauro]

Big Think Guy: Hey Peter, mind a few questions about Bezos and Musk?
Peter: Ahhh... sure, when?
Big Think Guy: I mean... now...
Peter: Ahhh... sure, let me google their name real quick...

[JM-usfr]

How can you be talking about something THIS cool, and simultaneously be saying it in a monotone voice?

[Proghead]

It's the completely wrong question. Space X has been to space dozens of times. If you're going to answer science questions at least get the question right.

[josephstalin]

Come to space, I dare ya. I double dare ya!!

[EugeneKhutoryansky]

Having plan B is not enough. We also need plan C, plan D, plan E, etc. We are just as likely to mess up the next planet as we are this one.

[WTFMannyxFTW]

"Those timelines aren't possible"

So... anyways, did you all see the Starship prototype? It obviously has more testing and development, but its there, its ACTUALLY THERE.
The reason to set tight time limits on yourself and your team, is to push yourselves, increase motivation and ambition. If he said "10 years" that seems to long. His workers would see it as "meh.. we got a decade to finish it". He probably will miss his deadline... but when it does get done, it will be at a much earlier date, than if he didn't set that goal.

Ps - if Bezos gets to space, I'm sure something look like Elysium will happen. Only the rich and powerful move into space, the earth continues to die.

[lawsofthecosmos]

It is smart to move all the industries to the moon, I’ll give that one to Bezos. However, as a person I like Elon more!💥

[StarGazerJim]

Space is big, there is plenty to go around. We shouldn’t be rooting for either of these guys - we need both. In fact, we need lots of companies doing many different things in space.

[alexbc]

Philosophy? Bruh, they both have fat stacks of cash; that's what's getting them into space.

[profflux]

An extremely premature question. Bezos has to put something in orbit first. Ask again when Blue origin is actually in space with their own vehicle.

[D.M.S.]

By facing the problems of colonizing Mars, we are going to find a way to fix Earth.

[chrism]

Multiplanetary species!! is what keeps saying you are misinformed about Elon