Jeff Bezos wasted little time in defending his space company, Blue Origin,
against criticism yesterday by rival space tycoon CEO Elon Musk, turning up
the heat on a weeks-long public spat between the two billionaires.
At a tech conference Tuesday, Musk hit out at Bezos for suing NASA to block
Musk’s space company, SpaceX, from receiving a $2.9 billion contract to
develop a lunar lander that would carry astronauts to the moon. Blue Origin
had also bid on the contract, but lost. “I think he should put more of his
energy toward getting to orbit than on lawsuits,” Musk said on stage about
Bezos, referring to Blue Origin’s recent launch into suborbital flight. “You
cannot sue your way to the moon, no matter how good your lawyers are.”
Bezos responded on Wednesday, pointing out that SpaceX also has a history of
suing the U.S. government to get its way. “SpaceX has a long track record of
suing the U.S. government on procurement matters and protesting various
governmental decisions,” a spokesperson for Amazon’s satellite division,
Project Kuiper, told Fortune. (The division is developing a broadband
Internet satellite constellation akin to SpaceX’s Starlink project.) “It is
difficult to reconcile that historical record with their recent position on
others filing similar actions.”
The Amazon spokesperson went so far as to provide a
document
detailing several lawsuits filed by SpaceX against the government and
competitors in recent years, as well as numerous protests to both the
Government Accountability Office and the Federal Communication Commission.
The litigation includes a 2019 complaint against the U.S. Air Force’s
decision to overlook SpaceX for launch contracts ultimately awarded to Blue
Origin, Orbital Sciences (now a part of Northrop Grumman), and a joint
venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Another lawsuit, from 2014,
protested the Air Force’s awarding of a sole-source launch contract to the
Boeing-Lockheed team, known as United Launch Alliance.
Representatives for SpaceX did not return a request for comment. In a tweet
on Wednesday afternoon, Musk addressed Bezos’ rebuttal and attempted to
differentiate SpaceX’s approach to litigation from Blue Origin’s. “SpaceX
has sued to be *allowed* to compete, BO is suing to stop competition,” Musk
wrote.
The feud between the two tech titans started shortly after Blue Origin lost
the lunar lander contract in April and then sued NASA over its decision last
month. The company claimed in its lawsuit that the space agency had
conducted an “unlawful and improper evaluation of proposals,” and is seeking
to force NASA to reopen the contract bidding process and “make a new
selection and award.”
Yesterday wasn’t the first time that Musk has ribbed Bezos over Blue
Origin’s lawsuit. Last month, Musk tweeted that Bezos had retired as Amazon
CEO in July “in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against
SpaceX.” Bezos had said he was retiring to focus on various other business
and philanthropic endeavors.
The professional rivalry between the world’s two richest men has escalated
as each has parlayed their primary business interests—Amazon in Bezos’ case,
and Tesla in Musk’s—into ambitious forays in aerospace and space
exploration. But the outspoken Musk has been more willing to needle Bezos
with public comments—even taking tech journalist Kara Swisher’s bait at the
Code Conference on Tuesday to poke fun at the phallic shape of Blue Origin’s
New Shepard launch vehicle.
When asked whether the two men communicate, Musk said they don’t
“verbally”—but acknowledged that he does “subtweet” Bezos occasionally on
Twitter.
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