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Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson each have a different plan for space. Here's how they stack up. (SPCE)

Elon Musk (left), Jeff Bezos (center), and Richard Branson.Patrick Pluel/Getty; Alex Wong/Getty; Hollis Johnson/Insider

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Elon Musk's SpaceX may be the buzziest name in private space exploration, but the Tesla CEO isn't the only mega-rich entrepreneur with grand visions for humanity's future beyond Earth's atmosphere. 

Amazon founder and fellow centi-billionaire Jeff Bezos has his own space company — Blue Origin — and he sells around $1 billion worth of Amazon stock each year to fund it. Richard Branson, whose Virgin Group dabbles in everything from airlines to healthcare, launched a commercial spaceflight company of his own called Virgin Galactic.

These three companies were all founded within a few years of one another in the early 2000s, but each has its own unique business model and plans for a space-faring future.

Here's what Musk, Bezos, and Branson are each trying to accomplish, and where their efforts stand today. 

Elon Musk

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, years before becoming Tesla's outspoken CEO and cementing himself as a regular fixture in the Twittersphere. 

The company grew out of an idea Musk had to send a spacecraft called the "Mars Oasis" to the red planet. The vehicle would deliver an experimental greenhouse and equipment for taking photos of the planet and sending them back to Earth. Musk hoped the project would spark a renewed interest in getting to Mars within the US government.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket takes off at the Kennedy Space Center on May 30, 2020 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.Joe Raedle/Getty Images

He pledged $20 million to fund the mission — and attempted to purchase some refurbished ICBMs from Russia to no avail — but discovered that the project was way out of his budget. He founded SpaceX to develop reusable rockets that would lower the cost of blasting people and things into space. 

That's what Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX has spent the better part of the last two decades trying to achieve, and it's made some great strides.

SpaceX launch in TexasGene Blevins/Reuters

It's completed numerous launches for commercial and government customers, and in 2012 it became the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station. In 2020 it became the first to send humans to space and to the ISS. And in April NASA picked the company to land the first astronauts on the Moon since 1972. 

SpaceX is also working on a broadband-internet service comprising thousands of satellites, called Starlink. The service aims to deliver high-speed internet to remote and rural areas, and SpaceX recently said it has more than 500,000 orders and deposits. 

SpaceX Starship.JPGREUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare

Ultimately, Musk thinks the future of humankind hinges on its ability to settle Mars. He said in 2020 that he wants to establish a city of 1 million people on Mars by 2050. Settlers will get there using a fleet of 1,000 SpaceX Starships — the towering, 387-foot-tall rocket ship the company is designing for deep-space travel.

Jeff Bezos

Like Musk, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos' fascination with space travel stretches back decades. He's been particularly taken with the physicist Gerard O'Neill's visions of floating space stations that could house trillions of humans once Earth runs out of resources. 

To indulge his obsession, Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 with a similar goal to Musk's venture: make space exploration cheaper through boosters that can be recycled for future launches. The Kent, Washington-based company operated in total secrecy until around 2003, and Bezos stayed tight-lipped about its plans for more than a decade after that. 

new shepard reusable rocket launch 2016 blue originBlue Origin

For years now, the company has been testing a suborbital rocket called New Shepard that will eventually take paying tourists to the edge of space in a pressurized capsule. Passengers will be able to catch a glimpse of Earth through large windows and experience a few minutes of weightlessness.

Read more: A private astronaut explains why his next flight — likely with Tom Cruise — is 'setting the bar for commercial human spaceflight forever'

In May, Blue Origin announced that the first flight will take place on July 20 and that the first seat will be auctioned off for charity. 

new shepard space capsule interior blue origin 01Blue Origin

The company is also developing a larger rocket called New Glenn for delivering payloads to low orbit, along with a secretive future project called New Armstrong. If you're sensing a pattern here, you're right — Blue Origin's launch vehicles are all named for former NASA astronauts. 

In 2019, Bezos revealed plans for a lunar lander called Blue Moon, which the company said will be ready in 2024 and will eventually help establish a "sustained human presence" on the moon. Blue Origin bid for a contract to land NASA astronauts on the moon and was beat out by SpaceX — but the company is disputing the decision

jeff bezos blue origin blue moonREUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

When Bezos announced plans to step down as Amazon's CEO in 2021, he said he planned to dedicate more time to his other ventures, including Blue Origin. And in a 2018 interview with Matthias Döpfner, the CEO of Insider's parent company Axel Springer, Bezos called the rocket company his "most important work."

Richard Branson 

Branson's space venture differs from Blue Origin and SpaceX in a couple of key ways. Virgin Galactic is currently focused on suborbital tourism, rather than launching people and payloads into space. It also has a radically different method of sending spacecraft out of Earth's atmosphere. 

Virgin galactic whiteknighttwo Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic doesn't launch rockets straight up from the ground like its rivals. Instead, its spacecraft are flown to 50,000 feet by a broad, dual-fuselage jet called WhiteKnightTwo. From there, the ship detaches and glides for a few seconds, before firing up its rocket motor and beginning a near-vertical ascent to around 300,000 feet. 

The company hasn't flown any tourists yet, but it has sold 600 tickets for $200,000 to $250,000 a piece. Although Virgin Galactic planned to accept passengers in 2021, it's pushed those plans to next year. 

Virgin GalacticVirgin Galactic

When the spacecraft reaches its final altitude, customers will be able to get out of their seats and spend several minutes floating around the luxurious cabin and gazing back at Earth or out into space. Virgin also plans to offer flights for research purposes. Once the spacecraft is pulled back into Earth's atmosphere, it will be piloted back to Virgin's New Mexico facility for a runway landing. 

Virgin GalacticVirgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic's spacecraft are entirely reusable, aside from their fuel, and the company aims to make launching things and people into space more economical and environmentally sound. 

In March, Virgin Galactic unveiled the VSS Imagine, the first of its next-generation SpaceShip III vehicles. Before that, it had built and flown two SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, including the VSS Enterprise, which was obliterated in a fatal crash in 2014.

Virgin Galactic VSS ImagineVirgin GalacticIn the future, Virgin Galactic plans to operate a fleet of different vehicles that could fly tourists to space hotels, transport researchers to floating labs, or provide lightning-fast transcontinental flights. In 2017, it spun off a company called Virgin Orbit, which is working to send satellites into orbit using a similar air-launch system. 

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