Why space? Battle of billionaires Bezos, Branson and Musk

Tuesday's announcement by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com Inc., that his private aerospace company, Blue Origin, will be launching from Cape Canaveral  drew comparisons with the space-travel oriented plans of fellow billionaires Elon Musk, who runs Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, in Hawthorne, and Britain's Richard Branson, who co-founded Virgin Galactic.

Here's a look at the three entrepreneurs.

Net worth*:

Bezos: $46.6 billion

Branson: $5 billion

Musk: $13.4 billion

Age:

Bezos: 51

Branson: 65

Musk: 44

Family:

Bezos: Married with four children

Branson:  Married twice with two children

Musk: Married twice with five children

Biography:

Bezos: "The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon" by Brad Stone (384 pages)

Branson: "Branson" by Tom Bower (416 pages)

Musk: "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future" by Ashlee Vance (400 pages)

Main businesses:

Bezos: chief executive of Amazon.com; founder of Blue Origin; owner of the Washington Post

Branson: founder of Virgin Group Ltd.

Musk: co-founder of PayPal Inc.; chief executive of SpaceX; chief executive of Tesla Motors Inc.; chairman of SolarCity Corp.

Quotes:

Bezos: "Our ultimate vision is millions of people living and working in space. We have a long way to go," in Bloomberg.

Branson: "What's great fun is just dreaming up ideas and asking the engineers, 'Do you think this will be possible,'" in the Wall Street Journal.

Musk: "Ultimately, the thing that is super important in the grand scale of history is—are we on a path to becoming a multi-planet species or not? If we’re not, that’s not a very bright future," in PC Magazine.

*According to Forbes Magazine

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