By                    Andrew Lisa

More About Him: How Much Is Jeff Bezos Worth? Also See: Fascinating Things Top Billionaires Have in Common

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He Was Dethroned as King of the Billionaires

Bezos was the richest man in the world — until he wasn’t. That drama dates back to at least 2019 when Bill Gates knocked Bezos off his perch. In 2021, Bezos was the off-and-on king of the net worth hill once again.

While that storyline was playing out in the press, however, a lesser billionaire was coming up fast in the rearview mirror: Elon Musk went on a run in the fall that put both Arnault’s and Bezos’ fortunes to relative shame.

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Bezos Built a Giant Yacht

With a reported cost of $500 billion, it’s also one of the most expensive — and that price tag doesn’t even include the support yacht that will accompany it to sea. That’s YS 7512, the 246-foot shadow vessel that Bezos commissioned to sail alongside Y721. It has a helipad for chopper access and plenty of storage for Bezos’ toys on the water.

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Bezos Beat Elon Musk Into Space

When the news broke that Arnault had overtaken Bezos as the richest person in the world on July 20, Bezos wasn’t around to hear about it. When he left to go to space that day, he was the richest man on Earth — Arnault took the title while Bezos was floating.

The two other giants in the private-sector space race — Musk and Richard Branson — also launched their cosmic side hustles at around the same time. Branson beat Bezos into space by just nine days aboard his own Virgin Galactic spacecraft, which launched and returned successfully on July 11. Musk, so far, has stayed grounded — although Musk’s original Tesla Roadster was orbiting in space long before Bezos or Branson knew the feeling of weightlessness.

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Bezos Lost the Long Game to SpaceX Here on Earth

Bezos beat Musk into space, but he lost to his rival where it really counted, back where gravity rules. Bezos spent much of the spring, summer and fall embroiled in a legal battle with NASA and Musk’s SpaceX company after the former awarded the latter a $2.9 billion contract to build a lunar lander that will ferry astronauts to the moon.

NASA gave the contract to SpaceX in April, and Bezos immediately challenged the ruling in court, saying the agency showed unfair favoritism to Musk and that it should have funded efforts by both Blue Origin and SpaceX to develop their own moon vehicles. SpaceX submitted a $3 billion bid, according to CNN, but Blue Origin’s bid was double that at $6 billion.

The legal sparring delayed NASA’s work on the Human Landing System (HLS) program until a federal judge finally put an end to Blue Origin’s case in early November.

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