Bezos vs. Branson vs. Musk: A reality check on the billionaire space race — and space station sci-fi
Bezos vs. Branson vs. Musk: A reality check on the billionaire space race — and space station sci-fi Alan Boyle Tue, 27 July 2021, 4:00 pm · 6-min read Blue Origin suborbital spaceflier Mark Bezos throws a ball to Oliver Daemen in zero-G while Wally Funk floats above in the New Shepard capsule. (Blue Origin Photo) The state of commercial space travel is changing so quickly that even science-fiction authors are struggling to keep up. That’s what Time magazine’s editor at large, Jeffrey Kluger , found out when he was finishing up his newly published novel, “Holdout,” half of which is set on the International Space Station. Kluger’s plot depends on the Russians being the only ones capable of bringing an astronaut back from the space station — but that no longer holds true, now that SpaceX is flying crews to and from orbit . “At the very end of the editing process, SpaceX started to fly … so I had to quickly account for that,” he explains in the latest episode...