What would you do if you were a billionaire and wanted to go to space?
The obvious answer: use that money to start a company to help you do just that.
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In recent years, some of the most famous names in tech, like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos have been founding and investing in companies that are looking to the stars.
Whether for personal dreams of adventure or for profit, these companies are doing the engineering and basic science needed to get humans into space.
They're also looking at other opportunities that space provides, like access to resources that are hard to get on Earth and the ability to collect information about our planet from a different perspective.
SpaceX: The "other" company from Tesla founder Elon Musk. In the short term, it's building rockets and capsules to get astronauts to the International Space Station. In the long term, it's looking to make trips to Mars somewhat affordable by creating rockets that can be used many times, like the "Grasshopper" below, which can take off and land instead of simply falling into the ocean.
Planetary Resources: With financial backing from Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, "Avatar" director James Cameron, and others, Planetary Resources is looking at revolutionizing the tech world by mining nearby asteroids for metals that are extremely rare on Earth but found in abundance in space.
Blue Origin: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is well-known for his love of all things space. While he founded Blue Origins in 2000, it's only in recent years that he's become more open with the progress his company is making towards making manned spaceflight affordable.
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