3 billionaires racing to build the future of space travel ;

It’s been a great year for space travel.

Early this year, after President Trump signed the Omnibus Bill, NASA miraculously received $20.7 billion, the highest amount since the 2009 stimulus package. The Trump Administration’s proposed 2018 budget was seen by many as a “War on Science,” but when the bill was actually voted on most of NASA’s budgets were increased or remained uncut, shocking the scientific community. This is surprising as Republican senators have historically been opposed to climate and earth-based research, some of which is carried out by NASA.

After a few decades of budget cuts and stagnation, NASA’s revitalized budget has caused much celebration. However, for many years it looked like NASA had been all but abandoned by the federal government. This drought led various entrepreneurs (mostly billionaires who established their fortune in other industries) to create their own private space companies.

Among these are billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson, who all made their fortunes in other industries.

Between them, they're posing a major challenge to established space industry giants

As a result, names like SpaceX and Blue Origin are becoming part of the increasingly lucrative military space race as the US seeks to counter ambitions by China and Russia. By some estimates, the space industry is expected to be worth $1 trillion (£766bn) by 2040.

Elon Musk: SpaceX and Mars;

Who else could this have started with? Elon Musk has easily been the most prominent billionaire to get invested in the space race -- in part because he clearly loves the attention. But he has also had a consistent goal with his company SpaceX from the very beginning: colonizing Mars. Musk wants human life on Mars, and to do that, humans need adequate transportation into space.

Musk's enthusiasm for creating a new space race (and being the face of it) have led to more excitement about space travel and colonizing other planets than there has been in possibly decades. SpaceX, valued at over $20 billion, has blown up a lot since its initial creation. Problem is, so have a lot of the rockets.

The years 2006, 2007, and 2008 each saw their own separate SpaceX rockets explode occur relatively shortly after take-off. It took years after these failures for Musk and SpaceX to rebuild their respective reputations, but even after that, the company wasn't free of failures. In 2016, a SpaceX rocket exploded during fueling -- it never even got to launch! Musk later put out a compilation video of his "favorite" SpaceX explosions as a PR spin, but that's a lot of money spent on a lot of rockets that blew up almost immediately.

SpaceX has taken lessons from these failures, though, and seen some additional successes as a result. The company has successfully landed 16 rockets, with one 2017 Falcon 9 launch making it into space to deploy a satellite before successfully making the landing. In February 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy complete with a Tesla car inside. Two of the Falcon Heavy's "cores" (booster rockets) successfully landed, but the center core was lost. That's still a mostly successful mission. It's hard to tell how close SpaceX is to any actual space travel with citizens, but they've made a lot of strides the past couple of years.

Jeff Bezos | Blue Origin ;

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos isn't as much a face of the space race as Musk is, but that's by choice. Bezos' space company Blue Origin actually predates SpaceX, as the Amazon chief founded the firm in 2000. But Bezos and the company have chosen to stay more behind the scenes as they develop their technology.

As a result, their successes rather than their failures often come as more of a shock. For example, Blue Origin's first rocket, the New Shepard, successfully launched to 329,839 feet in 2015 and then made a soft landing. After barely a peep from Bezos's company, it suddenly beat SpaceX in having a rocket successfully soft-land from space. In fact, the New Shepard went on to make a total of five such successful landings.

Richard Branson | Virgin Galactic ;

Sir Richard Branson has stepped up his astronaut training in preparation for a space flight he believes is just months away.

His optimism looks set to intensify a three-way-race between rival billionaires to conquer the private space market.

He told the BBC: “I’m going for astronaut training, I’m going for fitness training, centrifuge and other training, so that my body will hopefully cope well when I go into space.

"Instead of doing one set of tennis every morning and every evening, I'm doing two sets.

"I'm going kiting and biking - doing whatever it takes to make me as fit as possible."

In centrifuge training, memorably depicted by Roger Moore in the James Bond film Moonraker, the subject is subjected to high G-forces to simulate and prepare for the physical stresses of take-off.

It comes four years after tragedy struck the Virgin space programme, when its SpaceShipOne passenger rocket ship exploded, killing one pilot and leaving the other seriously injured.

Mr Branson’s ambitions to exit the world’s atmosphere follow decades of effort to enter the world record books.