Musk trolls Bezos as space race between world’s richest men heats up
- Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has filed a protest challenging Nasa’s contract award to Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build a moon spaceship
- Musk tweeted, “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol”.
The space race between the world’s two richest men went into hyperdrive on Tuesday after Tesla chief Elon Musk took a swipe at Jeff Bezos’ attempt to challenge a major Nasa contract.
The two billionaires, who have been trying to launch long-range orbital rockets, were competing for a coveted contract from the government to build a spaceship to deliver astronauts to the moon as early as 2024.
Musk won. Bezos was not happy.
Bezos’ Blue Origin on Monday filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), accusing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) of moving the goalposts for contract bidders at the last minute.
Musk, who also leads SpaceX, fired back with a tweet that said: “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol.”
He did not elaborate on the tweet, but pasted a screenshot of a 2019 report about Bezos unveiling Blue Origin’s moon lander on the same Twitter thread.