The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos

by Christian Davenport

AND SO THE moon. Again, the moon. The greatest achievement in the history of humankind, revisited. Only now, so much time had passed that the twelve Apollo astronauts who had walked on the lunar surface were dying off, one by one. James Irwin, Apollo 15, was the first to go, in 1991. Alan Shepard, Apollo 14, died seven years later. Pete Conrad, Apollo 12, passed a year after that. Then Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11. Then Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14. In January 2017, Gene Cernan, Apollo 17, the last man to walk on the moon, died. As he departed the lunar surface, Cernan said that “we leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return with peace and hope for all mankind.” He predicted that the return would be followed with a next giant leap, to Mars, by the end of the twentieth century, if not sooner. Now, it was nearly fifty years since the height of the Space Age. The Apollo astronauts had blazed a trail that no one followed, their prophecies left unfulfilled. Here, though, was a new generation, one ready to resurrect the dreams of their childhood, replicate the feats of their heroes, inspire as they had been inspired. Bezos was five when he watched Armstrong walk on the moon. Musk had not yet been born. But with their massive fortunes and ambition, they were reenacting the Cold War space race, a pair of Space Barons starring in the roles of nations, hoping to pick up where Apollo had left off more than a generation earlier. Their race to the stars was driven not by war or po...