How did Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin fail to dominate the billionaire space race?

The company employs the world's top engineers and has access to unlimited money but is plagued by safety concerns and toxic workplace culture

The billionaire space race is only a race by name. In actuality, there is SpaceX - and everyone else.

Only the company founded by Elon Musk nearly two decades ago has sent an orbital rocket booster into space and landed it safely again. Only SpaceX has landed a rocket the size of a 15-storey building on a drone ship in the middle of the ocean. Only SpaceX has carried both Nasa astronauts and private citizens to the International Space Station. Only SpaceX is producing thousands of its own table-sized communication satellites every year. Only SpaceX has the almost weekly launch cadence necessary to single-handedly double the number of operational satellites in orbit in less than two years. Only SpaceX is launching prototypes of the largest and most powerful rocket ever made, a behemoth called Starship that is destined to carry humans to the moon.