Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, said that Jeff Bezos, the owner of blue origin, needed to take his space exploration attempts more seriously The two men are at the helm of two of the three well-known private space companies that are developing the next generation of heavy US rockets for the moon and Mars missions and are also competing for contracts with NASA.
Although the goal of blue origin is still to prepare to launch its first orbital stage rocket as soon as possible, SpaceX has made hundreds of flights with its Falcon 9 rocket. However, a few years later, when NASA's lunar exploration mission is launched, they will face off. SpaceX has won the NASA contract, and blue origin is preparing to ensure a big order in the future.
Musk's comments were posted on a twitter post last week. He continued to interact with his followers on twitter. He shared a vote and asked them who is more trustworthy between billionaires and politicians. The vote was part of the controversy that the billionaire had recently fallen into. At that time, he and Congressman Alexander o'cassio Cortes (AOC, D-NY) conducted a brief public opinion poll on the social media platform musk hoped to acquire. The results showed that Elon Musk won more than 300000 votes in the poll with AOC.
During the interaction, musk also shared his views on Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, both billionaires. He outlined that Gates was reluctant to trust the Microsoft billionaire because he held a large short position in Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle company.
When talking about Bezos, the billionaire shared that he had no malice towards the Amazon billionaire, but he thought Bezos could work hard from now on to speed up the progress.
The picture shows the be-4 of blue origin, a staged combustion rocket engine fueled by liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas, as part of the 100% power level test earlier this year. The engine also demonstrated its "universal joint" capability. The universal joint allows the rocket engine to change its angle slightly to help the rocket adjust its direction in flight.
When asked if he thought Bezos was a good man, musk replied:
He's fine, I think. It seems that he has really spent a lot of time in the hot tub recently.
If he wants to get on track, it would be wise for him to have fewer parties and more work.
Musk's SpaceX company and Bezos' Blue origin company became the focus of public attention at the end of last year, when NASA chose to award the former a multi billion dollar contract to land astronauts on the moon. Although the space agency had hoped to conduct two competitive bidding, they were conservative in their commitment in the bidding because they foresaw that the funds allocated by the government might be insufficient.
Subsequently, both companies were shortlisted for the final award, but NASA chose SpaceX and explained its decision in a lengthy document. Blue origin refused to accept the failure. It first protested to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and then sued NASA in court. Although Bezos suggested that if the space agency changed its mind, he could pay a large part of the NASA contract at a discount, the company failed twice in a row.
NASA then decided to extend the SpaceX contract and conduct a new tender for the second lunar lander. The risks of space exploration require redundancy. Although the extension of SpaceX aims to develop a sustainable lunar presence, the new contract being sought by blue origin will enable NASA to have two lunar landers for its use.