Jeff Bezos just launched to the edge of space. Here's how Blue Origin's plans stack up to SpaceX and Virgin Galactic.

• Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson all have ventures dedicated to space travel.
• Each billionaire has his own vision for humanity's future in space.
• Bezos on Tuesday launched to the edge of space, becoming the second of the three to do so.

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

The Amazon founder and fellow centi-billionaire, Jeff Bezos, has his own space firm - $4. He $4 to the edge of space on Tuesday, launching 62 miles above the Earth's surface aboard its New Shepard rocket.

Richard Branson, whose Virgin Group dabbles in everything from airlines to healthcare, launched a commercial-spaceflight company of his own called Virgin Galactic. Earlier this month, he $4 on one of the company's rocket-powered planes, fulfilling a decades-long dream of traveling to space.

These three companies were all founded within a few years of one another in the early 2000s, but each has its own 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 $4 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 $4 the project would spark a renewed interest in getting to Mars within the US government.

He pledged $20 million to fund the mission - and attempted to $4 from Russia to no avail - but discovered that the project was way out of his budget. He $4 to develop reusable rockets that would lower the cost of blasting people and things into space.

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

It has 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 $4 to land the first astronauts on the Moon since 1972.

SpaceX is also working on a broadband-internet service consisting of thousands of satellites, called Starlink. The service hopes to deliver high-speed internet to remote and rural areas, and SpaceX recently said it had $4 and deposits.

Ultimately, Musk thinks humanity's future hinges on its ability to settle Mars. He said in 2020 that he wanted to $4 on Mars by 2050. Settlers would 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, the Amazon billionaire Bezos' fascination with space travel stretches back decades. He's been $4 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 as 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 about 2003, and Bezos stayed tight-lipped about its plans for more than a decade after that.

For years now, the company has been testing a suborbital rocket called $4, built to take paying tourists to the edge of space in a pressurized capsule. The idea is that on a Blue Origin flight, space tourists will be able to catch a glimpse of Earth through large windows and experience a few minutes of weightlessness.

Blue Origin $4 aboard New Shepard on Tuesday when it launched Bezos, $4, $4, and $4 more than 350,000 feet up. Daemen, whose father paid millions for his son's ticket to space, was able to join the flight after the winner of an auction backed out due to scheduling conflicts.

Read more: $4

"Ever since I was five years old, I've dreamed of traveling to space," Jeff Bezos wrote in an $4. "On July 20th, I will take that journey with my brother. The greatest adventure, with my best friend."

The company is also developing a larger rocket called $4 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 $4, which the company said would be ready in 2024 and would 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 $4.

When Bezos announced plans to $4 as Amazon's CEO in 2021, he said he planned to dedicate more time to his other ventures, $4. And in a $4 with Mathias 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 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 doesn't launch rockets straight up from the ground like its rivals. Instead, its spacecraft are meant to be 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 about 300,000 feet.

The company completed its first fully-crewed flight to the edge of space earlier this month, launching its founder and others more than 50 miles skyward. Virgin Galactic planned to accept passengers in 2021, it's pushed those plans to next year. It has $4 for $200,000 to $250,000 apiece.

When the spacecraft reaches its final altitude, customers will be able to get out of their seats and spend several minutes floating around the $4 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 Galactic's spacecraft are reusable, aside from their fuel, and the company hopes to make launching things and people into space more economical and environmentally sound.

In March, Virgin Galactic $4, 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 $4 in 2014.

In the future, Virgin Galactic $4 to operate a fleet of 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.