Aurora Starchild
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have a longtime rivalry and it’s pretty ridiculous. The two richest men in the world have had a bone to pick with each other since 2004.
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It seems that the feud is primarily based in the following:
Jeff Bezos has many similar space aspirations to Elon Musk, but Elon keeps beating him to the punch.
Elon Musk constantly picks on Jeff Bezos, like to the point where Elon sounds like a twelve-year-old.
But it goes deeper than that.
Here is what we know about the ongoing Bezos-Musk feud.
Both Men Have Very High-Tech Space Companies That Can Send People Into Outer Space
Bezos launched his first. Bezos’ Blue Origin launched in 2000 and Musk’s SpaceX launched in 2002.
Both companies utilize reusable rockets. Musk has insisted that his rockets are better than Bezos’ and said that he once gave Bezos advice on what not to do but Bezos allegedly didn’t listen to him.
Writer and podcaster Trung Phan lays out the conversation quite clearly. They also explain that Bezos just has different leadership and entrepreneurship styles than Musk, which is probably why he didn’t just cow down to Musk’s “advice.”
Phan also points out that Blue Origin’s motto and coat of arms clearly shows that Bezos intends on utilizing the virtue of patience in his space exploration and business dealings. The motto, “Gradatim Ferociter,” translates to “step by step, ferociously.” Two tortoises on the coat of arms symbolize Aesop’s Tortoise and the Hare fable. So essentially, Bezos is trying to emulate the concept of “slow and steady wins the race.”
But Elon keeps pushing ahead and obtaining contracts before Bezos does, and this seems to be leading to more controversy.
Both Billionaires Aspire to Be the Man Behind the First Return to the Moon.
It seems that Elon Musk is winning that race, which has prompted Bezos to file a heap of lawsuits.
In September 2013, Bezos filed a complaint for SpaceX’s request to privately lease NASA’s launchpad. Blue Origin wanted access to the launch pad and preferred to convert it into a commercial pad that could be used by all launch companies. Unfortunately for Bezos, Musk got the lease a few months later.
Bezos soon after obtained a patent for rockets that could land on water. But in March 2013, Musk filed to invalidate that patent, saying it was an “old hat” in the rocket engineering world.
In 2015, Blue Origin made a successful launch into space and Musk made a snarky tweet about it.
Bezos Thinks Musk Is Being Reckless, Endangering Lives
In 2019, Bezos publicly questioned Musk’s intentions and plans for colonizing Mars, stating that Earth is more precious. He invited people to spend time on top of Mount Everest prior to consider relocating to our desolate neighboring planet.
“We have sent robotic probes now to every planet in this solar system, and this is the best one,” Bezos said during a private lecture at the Yale Club. “My friends who want to move to Mars? I say do me a favor: Go live on the top of Mount Everest for a year first and see if you like it, because it’s a garden paradise compared to Mars.”
While Bezos is interested in going to Mars eventually, his primary plan is to revisit the Moon and then create a populated space around Earth. He points out that to remain on one planet would invite population control, which probably wouldn’t be a good idea.
“We want to go to space to protect this planet,” Bezos said. “That’s why the company’s named Blue Origin: It’s the blue planet that’s where we’re from,” Bezos said. “But we also don’t want to face a civilization of stasis, and that is the real issue if we just stay on this planet. That’s the long-term issue.
“Everybody on this planet is going to want to be a first-world citizen using first-world amounts of energy, and the people who are first-world citizens today using first-world amounts of energy? We’re going to want to use even more energy. A life of stasis would be population control combined with energy rationing … And that to me doesn’t sound like a very exciting civilization for our grandchildren’s grandchildren.”
Bezos’ Lecture May Have Upset Musk, Who Is Acting Like He Holds a Grudge
After that lecture, Musk started amping up the Twitter criticism of Bezos. Repeatedly accusing the Amazon founder of being a “copycat,” he powered forward with his own goals.
Musk then got the NASA contract for the anticipated 2024 moon landing, much to Bezos’ chagrin. But even though Musk had one-upped Bezos on the space colonization timeline, he didn’t stop with the chiding.
Here is Musk joining in on some good old-fashioned bullying on Twitter…
And here is Musk making fun of Bezos’ ability to “get it up” (into orbit).
Bezos then sued NASA for giving Musk the moon landing contract, citing safety concerns. Immediately after, he protested SpaceX’s satellite system, Starlink.
However, Amazon was simultaneously developing its own similar satellite system…
Then, Musk became the richest person in the world. He told Forbes he was going to send Bezos a silver medal.
“I’m sending a giant statue of the digit ‘2’ to Jeffrey B., along with a silver medal,” he joked.
Musk won’t let things go it seems, despite “winning.” He’s continued to jab at Bezos. Most recently, he complained about Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings series.
“Tolkien is turning in his grave,” he griped. And then, responding to himself, he said, “Almost every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both. Only Galadriel is brave, smart and nice.”
Maybe Musk can teach us a thing or two about being nice. Or maybe we can just let these two eat each other…
