The U.S. versus Russia space race is long over, but a new space race is brewing as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos battles Tesla and SpaceX Founder Elon Musk for eventual market control of delivering the Internet from space-based satellites.
Musk has the lead with the successful launch of 700 Starlink satellites, but Bezos is putting up $10 billion to launch a constellation of more than 3,000 satellites. The U.K. government is also in the race, but its 45% stake in a now-bankrupt company’s low-orbit Internet-via-satellite venture may come to naught despite the launching of 74 of 649 satellites.