Space Shocker! It Turns Out Blue Origin, Not Rocket Lab, Is "the Next SpaceX"

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have been quietly feuding for more than a decade.

Ten years ago, almost to the day, Bezos won one of the first skirmishes between the two battling space billionaires, when a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket conducted a successful landing on Earth after briefly visiting space. Musk -- who had been trying to land his SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a barge at sea -- immediately reversed course, and conducted a Falcon 9 landing on Earth of his own.

That accomplished, he returned to his original task and completed a sea landing a few months later.

Over the next decade, SpaceX proceeded to prove it could launch and land Falcon 9 repeatedly -- more than 500 times to date, while Blue Origin plodded along conducting occasional tourist trips to space on New Shepard. Not once did Blue attempt to launch a rocket to orbit, however. Not once did it attempt a landing at sea.

Until 2025.

Image source: Blue Origin.

2025: The year the world changed

As a result, for one solid decade, SpaceX reigned supreme in space, the only company on Earth able to both launch and land orbital-class rockets -- and as a result, the only company on Earth able to reuse rockets, making its launch costs essentially the same as the cost of filling up the tank on one of its reusable Falcon 9 rockets.

Its low cost of spaceflight permitted SpaceX to underprice every other rocket company on the planet, selling Falcon 9 rides for under $70 million -- and earning a profit on each launch. It also permitted SpaceX to build a Starlink satellite internet business on the cheap, at a scale greater and a price cheaper than anyone else could match.

This year, however, Blue Origin finally looks ready to give SpaceX a run for its money.

In January 2025, Blue Origin successfully launched its newest rocket, and its first orbital-class rocket, the New Glenn. The rocket missed its landing on Blue Origin's own landing barge back then, but on Thursday, Nov. 13, Blue succeeded on its second attempt, sending New Glenn to orbit -- then bringing it back down again to land.

And now the world has two orbital-class, reusable rockets, both of which have been proven to work -- and both of which are operated by American companies -- albeit rivals.

Two's company, three space rivals are a crowd

But wait, you may wonder -- shouldn't we have three orbital-class, reusable rockets by now? And the answer is yes, we should -- all three American, by the way.

In addition to the privately owned (and therefore difficult to invest in) SpaceX and Blue Origin, publicly traded space stock Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB) has also developed an orbital-class, reusable rocket, the Neutron. Neutron was supposed to have conducted its own first launch earlier this year, but development is taking a bit longer than planned, and first launch is now expected to take place not sooner than Q1 2026.

Coincidentally, there may be a bit of bad blood going on between Blue Origin and Rocket Lab as well. When New Glenn launched last week, it did so carrying a pair of Mars-exploring spacecraft for NASA -- both of which were built by Rocket Lab. Amusingly, however, Rocket Lab and Blue Origin each steadfastly ignored their counterpart's existence in the run-up to last week's launch, with Rocket Lab (for example) mentioning NASA, the University of California, Berkeley, and anyone else involved in its Mars project but the one providing the launch service -- at the same time as Blue referred repeatedly in its tweets to its NASA payload, without ever acknowledging who built it!

I suppose this is understandable, as both Blue Origin and Rocket Lab were basically in a race to find out which of the companies would claim the putative title of being "the next SpaceX," which is to say, the next company to prove it can both launch and land rockets. Now that contest is finished, however.

Blue Origin won. It's now the rocket stock most reminiscent of SpaceX's own success in rocketry.

Still, it's an open question how long Blue Origin will remain the only space company launching reusable rockets that's not named "SpaceX." Give it a few months, and Rocket Lab will almost certainly launch Neutron and try to join the club, first with a launch-and-no-landing, and later with an attempt to land Neutron at sea. While SpaceX remains the leader-by-a-light-year in this race, Blue really only has a two-launch lead over Rocket Lab at this point.

There's every hope that one day soon, Rocket Lab, the only one of these three space companies you can currently invest in... will soon close that gap.

Rich Smith has positions in Rocket Lab. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Rocket Lab. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.