The Space Barons
SpaceX against Blue Origin and the legacy contractors.
Summary
Davenport, a Washington Post reporter, wrote a comparative account of the entrepreneurs who entered spaceflight: Elon Musk at SpaceX, Jeff Bezos at Blue Origin, Richard Branson at Virgin Galactic and Paul Allen through Stratolaunch and the earlier SpaceShipOne.
The narrative covers the period from the Ansari X Prize, won by SpaceShipOne in 2004, through to around 2017. Davenport traces the different strategies. SpaceX pursued orbital launch from the start, competed for government contracts aggressively including by suing the Air Force over a sole-source award to United Launch Alliance, and pursued reusability of the first stage. Blue Origin started with suborbital tourism and a deliberately slow approach captured in its motto about gradual progress, funded entirely by Bezos's stock sales, and worked toward orbital capability over a much longer horizon. Virgin Galactic pursued suborbital tourism with an air-launched vehicle and suffered a fatal test accident in 2014. Allen funded the original prize-winning vehicle and later a very large carrier aircraft.
Davenport covers the relationship with the established industry and with NASA: the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services programme that funded SpaceX and Orbital, the resistance from incumbent contractors and their congressional supporters, and the argument over whether commercial providers could be trusted with crew.
The book has good access to the participants and covers the personalities well. It is journalism rather than technical or business analysis, so it says little about launch economics, about whether the cost reductions claimed were real, or about the capital requirements. It ends before Falcon Heavy's flight, before crewed Dragon, before Starship and before the divergence in outcomes between the companies became clear.
Key takeaways 7
- SpaceX pursued orbital launch and government contracts from the start while Blue Origin began with suborbital flight and a much longer horizon.
- SpaceX sued the Air Force over a sole-source launch award, which opened national security launch to competition.
- NASA's commercial cargo programme funded fixed-price milestone-based development rather than cost-plus contracting, which changed the incentives.
- Blue Origin was funded entirely by Bezos selling Amazon stock, which removed the need for external investors and for schedule pressure.
- Reusing the first stage was the specific technical bet that separated SpaceX's cost structure from that of established providers.
- Incumbent contractors and their congressional supporters resisted commercial competition because their programmes depended on the existing structure.
- Suborbital tourism and orbital launch are different businesses requiring different technology, and conflating them misled observers about progress.
Who should read it
Investors and founders in space and deep technology who want the comparative history of how four differently funded approaches to the same industry developed.
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