<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The Geminids meteor shower—which <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/geminids/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NASA calls</a> one of the “best and most reliable” yearly meteor showers—returned on Sunday and is slated to run through December 24, with a peak in three weeks, though no equipment is required to see it.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



The shower peaks between December 13 and December 14, but it may still be visible beforehand with the proper observing conditions, NASA&nbsp;<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/geminids/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reports</a>.



The shower is best viewed during the night before dawn, and because it usually starts earlier than other showers, between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., it’s considered one of the best for young viewers, according to NASA.



A dark, open sky away from city or street lights is ideal, and the best viewing position is laying flat on the back with feet facing the south—binoculars and telescopes typically aren’t needed.



Though it will be visible everywhere in the night sky, from Earth’s perspective, the Geminids meteor shower appears to originate from the direction of the Gemini constellation, which is northeast of the Orion constellation,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.space.com/34921-geminid-meteor-shower-guide.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to Space.



The Geminids meteor shower is fast, very bright, and mainly made up of white meteors, though there are some yellow, green, blue, and red ones,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/geminid-meteor-shower-uk-dates-how-to-see" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to the Royal Museums Greenwich.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BIG NUMBER</h2>



120. That’s how many meteors can be seen per hour during the shower’s peak season,&nbsp;<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/geminids/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to NASA. This makes the Geminids stream one of the “strongest” annual showers. In comparison, the&nbsp;<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/leonids/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Leonids</a>&nbsp;shower—which peaked last weekend—has about 15 meteors per hour, the&nbsp;<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/orionids/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Orionids</a>&nbsp;shower has 23 and the&nbsp;<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/perseids/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Perseids</a>&nbsp;shower peaks at around 100 meteors per hour.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The Geminids meteor shower was&nbsp;<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/geminids/%5C" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first discovered</a>&nbsp;in the 1800s, and the first showers only displayed between 10 and 20 meteors per hour. The Geminids stream has since grown into one of the “most intense” meteor showers, and is unique because it’s one of the only showers to originate from an asteroid, according to a June&nbsp;<a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/acd538" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">paper</a>&nbsp;published in the&nbsp;Planetary Science Journal. Most meteor showers are made of comet debris, but the Geminids stream originates from the asteroid&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids-comet-like-tail-is-not-made-of-dust-solar-observatories-reveal/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">3200 Phaethon</a>. Because comets are made of ice, when they travel close to the Sun, they melt and release a trail of ice and dust that eventually turns into a meteor shower. However, because asteroids are made of metal and rocks and aren’t affected by the Sun’s heat, many scientists are confused how 3200 Phaethon formed a meteor shower. The most likely answer is the asteroid violently collided with another object, causing the trail of debris that makes up the Geminids stream, according to the&nbsp;Planetary Science Journal&nbsp;study.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">TANGENT</h2>



This year, the Geminids stream’s peak coincides with the new moon, which falls on December 12,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-calendar/#Geminids" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to the American Meteor Society. The moon will be 1% full around this time, making the night’s sky dark and creating an ideal viewing environment for the meteor shower.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.space.com/34921-geminid-meteor-shower-guide.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Geminid meteor shower 2023: When, where &amp; how to see it</a>&nbsp;(Space)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/britneynguyen/2023/11/17/leonid-meteor-shower-peaks-tonight-heres-how-to-watch/?sh=54baa8b0195b">Leonid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight—Here’s How To Watch</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

Geminid Meteor Shower In China

How To Watch Geminids Meteor Shower: One Of This Year’s ‘Most Intense’ Showers Has Returned

Sorry, Ph.D.s! Dean Stoecker’s analytics software, Alteryx, can turn almost anyone into a data scientist. And it’s turned him into a billionaire



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Sun Tzu&nbsp;meets software in mid-August at downtown Denver’s Crawford Hotel. The floors are terrazzo. The chandeliers are accented with gold. And Dean Stoecker, the CEO of data-science firm Alteryx, has summoned his executives for the annual strategy session he calls Bing Fa, after the Mandarin title of&nbsp;The Art of War. “Sun Tzu was all about how you conserve resources,” says Stoecker, 62. “How do you win a war without going into battle?”



Stoecker knows something about conserving resources. He cofounded Alteryx in 1997, when the data-science industry scarcely existed, and spent a decade growing the firm to a measly $10 million in annual revenue. “We had to wait for the market to catch up,” he says. As he waited, he kept the business lean, hiring slowly and forgoing outside investment until 2011. Then, as “big data” began eating the world, he raised $163 million before taking Alteryx public in 2017. The stock is up nearly 900% since, and&nbsp;Stoecker&nbsp;is worth an estimated $1.2 billion.&nbsp;



“People ask me, ‘Did you ever think it would get this big?’” he says. “And I say, ‘Yeah, I just never thought it would take this long.’ ”



Alteryx makes data science easy. Its simple, click-and-drop design lets anyone, from recent grads to emeritus chairmen, turn raw numbers into charts and graphics. It goes far beyond Excel. Plug in some numbers, select the desired operation—say data cleansing or linear regression—and presto.&nbsp;



There are applications in every industry. Coca-Cola uses Alteryx to help restaurants predict how much soda to order. Airlines use it to hedge the price of jet fuel. Banks use it to model derivatives. Data analysis “is the one skill that every human being has to have if they’re going to survive in this next generation,” says Stoecker. “More so than balancing a checkbook.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5d659930673aa300083c3db8/0x800.jpg?cropX1=0&amp;cropX2=1535&amp;cropY1=578&amp;cropY2=2497" alt="Libby-adams-alteryx"/><figcaption>Libby Duane Adams, cofounder and chief customer officer of Alteryx.ETHAN PINES</figcaption></figure>



Alteryx’s numbers support that forecast. The&nbsp;company, based in Irvine, California, generated $28 million in profit on $254 million in revenue in 2018, and Stoecker expects to hit $1 billion in annual sales by 2022.&nbsp;



Stoecker grew up the son of a tinkerer. His father built liquid nitrogen tanks for NASA before quitting his job to sell “pre-cut” vacation homes in Colorado. He made them himself. “It was literally just him nine months of the year, and he would cut wood for 50 buildings,” Stoecker recalls. As a teenager he joined his father, and by the time he arrived at the University of Colorado Boulder to study economics, he was able to pay his own way.



After graduating in 1979, Stoecker earned his M.B.A. from Pepperdine, then took a sales job in 1990 at Donnelley Marketing Information Services, a data company in Connecticut. There he met Libby Duane Adams, who worked in the firm’s Stamford office. Seven years later, the pair&nbsp;founded&nbsp;a data company of their own, which they cumbersomely named Spatial Re-Engineering Consultants. (A third cofounder, Ned Harding, joined around the same time; Stoecker, who came up with the idea, took the lion’s share of the equity.) &nbsp;



SRC’s first customer, a junk mail company in Orange County, paid $125,000 to better target its coupons. “We were building big-data analytic cloud solutions back in 1998,” says Stoecker, when many businesses were barely online and terms like “cloud computing” were years away.&nbsp;



SRC was profitable from the outset. “We didn’t spend ahead of revenue. We didn’t hire ahead of revenue,” says Adams, sitting in a remodeled 1962 Volkswagen bus at Alteryx headquarters, theoretically a symbol of the company’s journey. “We never calculated burn rates. That was a big topic in the whole dot-com era. We were not running the business like a dot-com.”&nbsp;



<figure><iframe src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fe.infogram.com%2F491907ed-e75b-47b9-94b2-bfff7857f39d%3Fsrc%3Dembed&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Finfogram.com%2Falteryx-1hkv2nqgn5zp2x3&amp;image=https%3A%2F%2Finfogram-thumbs-1024.s3.amazonaws.com%2F2e76153a-b2a0-41b3-895e-78c830a443e4.jpg&amp;key=3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=infogram"></iframe></figure>



In 2006, as part of a pivot away from one-off consulting gigs, SRC released software to let customers do the number-crunching themselves. They named the software Alteryx, a nerdy joke for changing two variables simultaneously: “Alter Y, X.” Stoecker made Alteryx the company name, too, in 2010.&nbsp;



The market was still small. To grow revenue, “we just kept raising the price of our platform,” Stoecker says. In the beginning, Alteryx sold its subscription-based software for $7,500 per user; by 2013 it was charging $55,000. The next year, as Stoecker felt demand growing, he slashed prices to $4,000. Volume made up for the lower rate. Today Alteryx has 5,300 customers. “We immediately went from averaging eight, nine or ten [new clients] a quarter to north of 250,” he says.



Although data mining and data analytics is a&nbsp;long-established&nbsp;field, encompassing a slew of startups as well as giants like Oracle and IBM, “we see almost no direct competition,” Stoecker&nbsp;insists.



“It’s a pretty wide-open field,” says Marshall Senk, a senior research analyst at Compass Point Research &amp; Trading. “The choice is you buy a suite from Alteryx or you go buy 15 different products and try to figure out how to get them to work together.”



Inside Alteryx’s offices, Stoecker pauses in front of a time line depicting his first 22 years in business. “The good stuff hasn’t even occurred yet,” he says. “I’m going to need a way bigger wall.”



Cover Photograph by Ethan Pines for Forbes.



-Noah Kirsch; Forbes

1920×0

Business Intelligence For Dummies

As humanity explores new frontiers in space, the 50th
anniversary of man landing on the moon serves as a reflection of where we have
come from, and where we are to go next. What does it mean for the estimated $7
billion space industry in Africa?



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



July 20, 1969, will always be remembered as the year man
made earth-shaking history.



It was one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind
as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Apollo 11 became
the first aircraft to land safely on the moon. 



In Africa, just a year after this historic moment, Kenya
launched its first satellite named Uhuru, meaning ‘freedom’ in Swahili.



It was Africa’s giant leap. It was sponsored by NASA and was the first earth-orbiting mission dedicated to celestial X-ray astronomy. 



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="#30Under30: Technology Category 2019 (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/30-under-30/2019/07/01/30under30-technology-category-2019/" target="_blank">#30Under30: Technology Category 2019</a>



It is speculated that in 1970 and 1973, Kenya was given two
rocks collected from the Apollo 11 and 17 lunar missions. Since then, more
African nations have joined the space race.



“The space industry is worth $400 billion and in Africa, the
space industry is worth up to $7 billion,” Nigerian space enthusiast and
entrepreneur, Oniosun Temidayo, says.



He grew up in Oyo State in the southwest of Nigeria,
thousands of kilometers away from where the Apollo mission took place, yet he
is fueled with passion for the space industry.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="484" height="611" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Space.png" alt="" class="wp-image-41778" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Space.png 484w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Space-300x379.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Space-238x300.png 238w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 484px) 100vw, 484px" /></figure></div>



Temidayo is the founder of Space in Africa, a platform that
covers business, technology, discoveries, events and political news on the
African space and satellite industry.



As per his research with Space in Africa, it is expected
that by 2024, at least 15 African countries would have launched at least one
satellite into space.



These include Algeria, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan and Tunisia. Senegal has set a two-year target to launch its first nanosatellite.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“The total projected number of satellites by African countries is rising from 35 to 64 within the same period; a 83 percent increase in the number of satellites in the region,” Temidayo says. </blockquote>



According to the African Space Industry Annual Report 2019:
“The aggregate GDP of the continent has doubled in the last 10 years, to over
$2.2 trillion. The African space market is now worth over $7 billion annually,
and we project that is likely to grow over 40% in the next five years to exceed
$10 billion by 2024.” 



There are many commercial ventures aligned to investing in
the space industry in Africa.



The report states that over 8,500 people are employed in the African space industry.



“African engineers built 14 of the 35 satellites, including
those they built in Africa and others using facilities outside of Africa,” the
report said, implementing the continental space policy under the African Union’s
(AU) Agenda 2063.



Egypt was approved as host country for the headquarters of
the new African Space Agency passed by the AU.



One of the agency’s objectives is strengthening “space
missions on the continent in order to ensure optimal access to space-derived
data, information, services and products”.



Africa’s plans have surely sky-rocketed in this regard.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Africa Takes to the Stratosphere and Beyond (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2018/12/15/the-future-is-looking-up/" target="_blank">Africa Takes to the Stratosphere and Beyond</a>



It has been 17 years since South African-born tech
entrepreneur, Mark Shuttleworth, became the first African in space.



Called the ‘Afronaut’, at 28, he became the second-ever
space tourist flying to the International Space Station as a member of the
Soyuz TM-34.



He paid about $20 million to spend eight days there; a dream
only a few could afford then – and even now.



Today, Temidayo aspires to reach for the stars like
Shuttleworth did.



But until then, he continues to build a body of work on the
African space economy.



50 years of the lunar landing



Last month, Temidayo and his team celebrated the 50th
anniversary of Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the Moon.



To celebrate, his team featured 10 of the brightest young
professionals under the age of 30 who are doing incredible work in the African
space industry, calling them ‘The Future of the African Space Industry’.



“These are 10 young professionals below the age of 30. Their
work cuts across space engineering, geospatial technologies, space law and
business development. They are already influencing the growth of the industry,”
he says.



“The exciting thing about this is that, they are mostly women,” Temidayo reveals.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2018/12/28/3d-printing-from-spaceship-engines-to-personalized-orthotics/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="3D Printing: From Spaceship Engines To Personalized Orthotics (opens in a new tab)">3D Printing: From Spaceship Engines To Personalized Orthotics</a>



Thousands of kilometers away, another man was also
celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo mission – Aldrin, the man who
was on the moon with Armstrong, and who turned 89 this year.



“Ten, nine, ignition sequence start, six, five, four, three,
two, one, zero, all engines running. We have a lift off, lift off on Apollo
11,” were the immortal words on the space intercom during Apollo 11’s launch.



On the day, 530 million TV viewers watched the astronauts
take their first steps on the moon.



“The moon landing was not just a US achievement. It was a
global achievement,” Temidayo says.



Reflecting on the mission, Aldrin posted a tweet with an
image of him and his fellow Apollo 11 astronauts, including mission commander
Armstrong, examining a lunar sample brought back from the moon.



As part of the celebrations, Buzz Aldrin Ventures had a
party planned; the Official Apollo XI 50th Anniversary Gala at the Ronald
Reagan Presidential Library’s Air Force One Pavilion in Simi Valley with himself
to honor the mission, team and crew that made history in 1969.



For his journey to space, it is reported that Aldrin carried wine, bread, and a chalice for communion while Armstrong carried a piece of the wooden propeller of the Wright Flyer (the first successful heavier-than-air powered aircraft built by the Wright brothers).



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“When we made it to the moon, it was uncharted territory – literally! Our 21-day quarantine was a necessary precaution at the time&#8230; we didn’t know if there were any microorganisms on the moon,” Aldrin said in a Twitter post.</blockquote>



Meanwhile, NASA rolled out numerous activities for anyone to
get involved in the 50th anniversary celebrations.



NASA says it is working to establish a permanent human
presence on the moon within the next decade to uncover new scientific
discoveries and lay the foundation for private companies to build a lunar
economy.







Man’s return to the moon



NASA is set on landing the first American woman and next
American man at the South Pole of the moon by 2024, followed by a sustained
presence on and around the moon by 2028.



This is according to the NASA Strategic Plan for Lunar
Exploration.



Using Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the
Moon in Greek mythology, she encapsulates their path to the Moon as the name of
their program to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024.



“When they land, Artemis astronauts will step foot where no human has ever been before: the moon’s South Pole,” NASA says.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Mysterious Object Under Moon’s Largest Crater Found By Scientists (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/current-affairs/2019/06/11/mysterious-object-under-moons-largest-crater-found-by-scientists/" target="_blank">Mysterious Object Under Moon’s Largest Crater Found By Scientists</a>



Their plan is to conduct ground-breaking decadal science, commercialize
space development, extend human presence into deep space, develop technologies
for long-term survival, and sustainable and affordable human and robotics
programs.



With advanced technologies, and recycleable rockets, this
shouldn’t be too hard as space travel has become more affordable.



But, one question remains, after all these years, why hasn’t
there been another trip to the moon since?



“Houston, we have a problem”



Conspiracy theorists have famously argued that the moon
landing may not have even taken place at all.



The History Channel identified some of these conspiracies.



In the documentary, it argued that the moon landing was fake
because the American flag looked like it was flapping in the wind, stars could
not be seen, and the shadows looked disfigured. 



Some have gone as far as saying the moon landing was filmed in a hidden studio.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Crazy Aviators: The Eerie Similarities Between Billionaire Howard Hughes And Elon Musk (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2019/04/06/crazy-aviators-the-eerie-similarities-between-billionaire-howard-hughes-and-elon-musk/" target="_blank">Crazy Aviators: The Eerie Similarities Between Billionaire Howard Hughes And Elon Musk</a>



Temidayo considers people who don’t believe in the lunar
mission to be “flat earth believers”.



“I think it is an insult on science and an insult on the
thousands of people who were directly and indirectly involved in making it
happen… And usually, people that come up with these conspiracy theories are
non-scientists; that is why no scientific body of national or international
standing has maintained a dissenting opinion,” he says.



At the time that America was planning its space voyage, the
Soviet Union was also in competition to land man on the moon, but failed.



As a result, they denied ever attempting, according to news
reports.



Temidayo is of the opinion that there is no need for man to
go back to the moon. “Another trip to the moon might not be a good investment,”
he says.



“The question is if we are going back to the moon, what we
are going there for?” 



Temidayo believes we have gained enough insight from the
moon that another trip there isn’t necessary.



Instead, man should be looking at newer space conquests,
perhaps something a little closer to home.



From the moon to Mars



Mars, the red planet, has been on the radar of space
enthusiasts for years now.



The planet, which is closest to Earth, is most visible in
our skies at night.



Admired for its beauty, it could also mean profit.



Billionaires, governments and private companies are all in
the race to colonize it, and it seems that the red planet is a prized potential
possession, a sought-after destination for the richest on Earth. South
Africa-born tech entrepreneur, Elon Musk, has grand plans for getting humanity
to Mars.



“You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is
going to be great – and that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all
about. 



“It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars,” Musk said on SpaceX.com.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Tesla’s $675 Million Loss Pulls Elon Musk Back To Earth After Stellar SpaceX Launch (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2018/02/09/teslas-675-million-loss-pulls-elon-musk-back-earth-stellar-spacex-launch/" target="_blank">Tesla’s $675 Million Loss Pulls Elon Musk Back To Earth After Stellar SpaceX Launch</a>



The SpaceX CEO is planning the first private lunar passenger
flight and a cargo mission to Mars.



“The objectives for the first mission will be to confirm
water resources, identify hazards, and put in place initial power, mining, and
life support infrastructure,” says the company.



SpaceX has also planned for a second mission to the planet
with both cargo and crew and its target is 2024 using a rocket called Starship.



NASA has set a date for its proposed Mars mission, expected
to happen in 2030.



“Our sustainable Moon to Mars exploration approach is
reusable and repeatable – we will build an open exploration architecture in
lunar orbit with as many capabilities that can be replicated as possible for
missions to the red planet,” it says.



Through the exploration of the moon, NASA plans to push the
boundaries of human knowledge, answer the question of&nbsp; ‘are we alone?’ and unlock the mysteries of
the universe.



Despite many proposed missions for man to visit Mars, it is
easier said than done.



According to researchers from NASA, the atmosphere on Mars is made of carbon dioxide and is extremely thin with no breathable oxygen.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“There’s no water on the surface to drink, either. The landscape is freezing, with no protection from the sun’s radiation or from passing dust storms. The keys to survival will be technology, research and testing,” it says.</blockquote>



NASA has since been constructing technology that will aid in
facilitating a steady supply of oxygen on Mars.



However, it is very costly to do so as volumes of it need to
be transported from Earth.



At the same time, the phenomenon of space mining is also an
emerging trend.



Goldman Sachs sees it as the next frontier. 



It predicts an asteroid-grabbing spacecraft could cost $2.6
billion.



Regardless of the cost, space travel promises to be big
business.



What sounds like a dream now may soon become the reality of
tomorrow where humans can visit family and friends on another planet, thus
attesting itself as a spacefaring civilization.&nbsp;

Space5

From Africa To Mars

This Thursday, Jeff Bezos will make an announcement about his space company, Blue Origin. The image on the invitation sent to members of the press, a view of the Earth as seen from the Moon, suggests the Amazon founder will unveil  Blue Origin’s plans to send both robotic and human missions to the lunar surface, possibly with a NASA contract in hand.



If that’s the case, he won’t be alone. Aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin has already unveiled its lunar plans in partnership with NASA. And Elon Musk’s SpaceX has a plan for a lunar flyby mission, while NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstein suggested to a Senate committee in March that the agency was open to using commercial heavy-lift rockets for its lunar crewed missions. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy could serve such a mission.



The last few years have seen an increasing interest in going back to the Moon. The Trump Administration has announced it wants NASA to put humans back on the Moon by 2024, and the agency has also announced plans for a “<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars/lunar-outpost/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lunar Gateway</a>” &#8211; a space station orbiting the Moon that would be developed in collaboration with multiple space agencies. &nbsp;That space station brings with it opportunities for commercial companies to develop lunar capabilities to provide support for missions at the Gateway.



Lockheed Martin has a long history with NASA and lunar exploration—it was one of the contractors on the Apollo missions. But billionaires Musk, who runs Tesla as well as SpaceX, and Bezos represent the burgeoning commercial space industry, and the paths the two respective men took to get to this point couldn’t be much different.



What the two companies have in common is that both are very much products of their founders’ visions. Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, just three years after Amazon’s IPO fed his fortune. Two years later, fresh off the sale of PayPal, Musk founded SpaceX with his own personal fortune.



It’s from there, however, that the paths of the companies diverged. For the next 15 years, Blue Origin barely made any noise, save for some controversy as Bezos bought up land in Texas to serve as the company’s test facility in the early 2000s, and some small announcements about milestones it had achieved in agreements made with NASA for about $25.7 million in funding for space development. Bezos remains the sole owner of Blue Origin, and&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates that the world’s wealthiest man has funneled over $1.5 billion of his personal fortune into the company, financed by sales of Amazon stock.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cd38d915218470008b0301d/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Time-lapsed photo of SpaceX Falcon 9 launch"/><figcaption>Time-lapsed photo of SpaceX Falcon 9 launchSPACEX</figcaption></figure>



SpaceX, in the meantime, has been anything but quiet. The company began making noise in December 2003, when it drove its first rocket, the Falcon One, from the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California to Washington, D.C. in order to unveil it at the National Mall for an invited group of Congressional staffers, NASA and FAA officials.. Musk regularly promotes the company and its plans for the future, his eyes firmly set on Musk’s personal vision that SpaceX is to be the vanguard of humans becoming a multiplanetary civilization.



Musk was also more aggressive in obtaining venture financing and government contracts in order to support his company. Though he still maintains majority ownership (Forbes&nbsp;estimates his stake in the company is over 50%), SpaceX has also raised over $2.5 billion to date in venture financing, grants and debt, with a current valuation of over $31.5 billion, according to Pitchbook. Recent SEC filings show it aims to raise another $500 million in capital this year.



Throughout the past decade, SpaceX has kept itself in the public eye —even as it has brought the “move fast and break things” ethos of Silicon Valley to the traditionally more conservative aerospace industry.



“SpaceX is off trying new things, rapidly innovating, breaking things,” said Chad Anderson, founder of Space Angels, a VC firm specializing in the space industry. &nbsp;“They test quite a bit, and we’ve seen some failures. We’ve seen explosions of rockets — they even put a highlight reel together of rockets exploding as they tried to land them. They take it as a point of pride that they’re willing to try new things and they’re really captured the imagination of the public that way.”



By contrast, Blue Origin rarely makes major announcements about future plans, unless it’s unavoidable due to public contracts or other reasons, preferring instead to focus its press efforts on what it’s accomplished. “Bezos proudly proclaims whenever he does a big announcement, he likes to talk about the things that he’s done,” said Anderson. One rare exception for this has been its plans for the Moon. Its robotic cargo delivery lander, Blue Moon, was first announced in 2017, and last summer the company revealed that it had a five year plan to get to the Moon.



While SpaceX has adopted a high-profile view of its risky, iterative innovation strategy, Blue Origin’s development is nearly the exact opposite. The company motto is&nbsp;Gradatim Ferociter, a Latin phrase meaning Step By Step, Ferociously. In interviews, Bezos has quoted the old military maxim that “slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” and every time one of its resuable rockets has a successful launch and landing, a tortoise is painted on its side, a nod to Aesop’s moral that “slow and steady wins the race.”



Despite Bezos’ faith in a more slow-paced, perfectionist approach to development, it’s undeniable that SpaceX has seen more success &#8211; at least so far. Though Blue Origin has had 11 successful launches to date, it has yet to send any spacecraft to orbit, instead keeping its launches suborbital, like the Mercury spacecraft that its current system is inspired by.



SpaceX, meanwhile, has had over 70 successful commercial orbital launches, which include not only putting satellites in orbit but also 15 successful deliveries of cargo to the International Space Station. It was the first company to make a cargo delivery to the station, and the company has also seen two successful launches of its Falcon Heavy rocket, currently the most powerful rocket in commercial production.



This track record has also come at some cost to the company. It’s had multiple launch failures, some of which have resulted in the loss of customer payloads, and more recently, a test fire of rockets on the spacecraft it’s developing to deliver astronauts to the space station led to the destruction of that craft— and has also likely pushed the schedule for sending astronauts to the station back to 2020. The company was originally set to have its first successful crewed flight in 2017.



In this billionaire race to the Moon, Bezos and Musk have set themselves up as the Tortoise and the Hare, respectively. But it likely won’t be until at least the mid-2020s that we learn which approach will win.



-Alex Knapp; Forbes Staff

Tag: NASA

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