Space Chase Billionaires

Elon Musk is the founder, chief executive and chief designer of SpaceX. The company managed to overcome a series of technical and financial crises and made history Friday by attaching the first private spacecraft to the international space station.

Amazon.com Founder Jeff Bezos runs Blue Origin, a start-up targeting space station runs. An unnamed spaceship developed by Blue Origin suffered a major failure during a test flight in the summer of 2011.

 In December, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen indicated he is prepared to commit $200 million or more of his wealth to build the world’s largest airplane as a mobile platform for launching satellites at low cost. The novel, high-risk project was conceived by renowned aerospace engineer.

British billionaire and playboy Sir Richard Branson years ago entered the fray, creating Virgin Galactic, an extension of his well-known brand that intends to take well-heeled customers to the edge of space, but also foresees launching satellites and carrying experiments.

 Planetary Resources Inc., a start-up with backers including Google co-founders Larry Page, left, Eric Schmidt, right, and Ross Perot Jr., not shown, unveiled in April a plan to send robotic spacecraft to remotely mine asteroids.

 Robert Bigelow is the billionaire founder of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain and the president of Bigelow Aerospace. In the spring of 2012, Boeing completed a parachute drop test of the Crew Space Transportation-1000 spacecraft. Mr. Bigelow plans to use the CST-100 spacecraft for transporting people to and from his expandable modules developed for space habitation.