Inside Elon Musk & Jeff Bezos’ 18-year feud & space war that started with awkward dinner as Amazon titan swipes at rival
ELON Musk and Jeff Bezos may have a lot in common, including being the world’s richest men and owners of space companies, but the two are far from friends.
The most recent hint of their 18-year-old feud came on Monday, when the Amazon founder questioned whether Musk’s purchase of Twitter gave China power over the social media platform.
Bezos made the comments in a response to a New York Times reporter who mentioned Tesla’s reliance on China for its large market and lithium batteries.
Quoting the tweet, Bezos said: “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage of the town square?”
Bezos then added a follow-up tweet, saying his own answer to the question was “probably not.”
“The more likely outcome in this regard is complexity in China for Tesla, rather than censorship at Twitter,” he added. “But we’ll see. Musk is extremely good at navigating this kind of complexity.”
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Earlier this month, as news broke that Musk was planning on buying Twitter, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled: “Elon Musk’s Twitter Investment Could Be Bad News for Free Speech.”
In return, Musk tweeted that the Bezos-owned publication was “always good for a laugh.”
It’s far from the first spar between the two billionaires, who have reportedly been feuding since an awkward dinner in 2004, when their space companies SpaceX and Blue Origin were still getting started.
As reported by Business Insider, Musk told author Christian Davenport that Bezos was “barking up the wrong tree” when the two met to discuss their space companies.
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Musk reportedly said Bezos kept proposing “dumb” ideas that SpaceX had already tried, and that the Blue Origin founder “ignored” his “good advice.”
Since that fateful meeting, the two have continued increasing their wealth and influence, while also continuing their feud.
SPACEX V. BLUE ORIGIN
They publicly sparred again in 2013, when SpaceX tried to secure exclusive use of NASA’s launchpad.
Blue Origin and SpaceX rival United Launch Alliance filed a complaint with the government to prevent SpaceX from getting the pad, a move that Musk called a “phony blocking tactic.”
Musk went even further, telling Space News at the time that “[Blue Origin] has not yet succeeded in creating a reliable suborbital spacecraft, despite spending over 10 years in development.”
He continued: “If they do somehow show up in the next five years with a vehicle qualified to NASA’s human rating standards that can dock with the Space Station, which is what Pad 39A is meant to do, we will gladly accommodate their needs.”
However, Musk added: “Frankly, I think we are more likely to discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct.”
Another battle between SpaceX and Blue Origin came the next year, when SpaceX petitioned to invalidate a patent for drone ships given to Bezos’ company.
A judge eventually sided with SpaceX, which argued the science in the Blue Origin patent was “old hat.”
TWITTER BEEF
Musk and Bezos’ feud got even more public with the rise of Twitter, which has served as a conduit for their feud.
When Bezos celebrated Blue Origin finally landing its New Shepard rocket in 2015 with a tweet calling it “the rarest of beasts — a used rocket,” Musk publicly disagreed.
Replying to the tweet, Musk said : “Not quite ‘rarest’. SpaceX Grasshopper rocket did 6 suborbital flights 3 years ago & is still around.”
Then, when SpaceX landed its Falcon 9 spacecraft, Bezos tweeted: “Congrats @SpaceX on landing Falcon’s suborbital booster stage. Welcome to the club!”
Musk has repeatedly used Twitter to throw jabs at Bezos, often calling him a “copycat” and making fun of the shape of Blue Origin rockets.
In 2019, following Blue Origin’s unveiling of a lunar-landing vehicle concept, Musk tweeted: “Putting the word ‘Blue’ on a ball is questionable branding.”
Bezos, on his part, has been more reserved about his criticism of SpaceX, but has described Musk’s goal of getting humans to Mars as “un-motivating.”
“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,” he said in 2019.
The space rivalry goes beyond Twitter jabs, and Musk has accused Blue Origin of stealing talent from SpaceX, claiming SpaceX set up an email filter for the words “blue” and “origin,” as reported by Business Insider.
“Blue Origin does these surgical strikes on specialized talent offering like double their salaries,” Musk told his biographer. “I think it’s unnecessary and a bit rude.”
Musk went even further in an interview with The New York Times in 2020, suggesting Bezos was too old for the space business.
“The rate of progress is too slow and the amount of years he has left is not enough, but I’m still glad he’s doing what he’s doing with Blue Origin,” he said.
RACE TO THE MOON
Things heated up again in 2021 when NASA made SpaceX the sole recipient of the contract to land humans on the moon, a decision Blue Origin challenged immediately.
Musk responded to the challenge by tweeting: “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol” along with a photoshopped picture of the Blue Origin lunar lander, changing its name from “Blue Moon” to “Blue Balls.”
And Musk’s criticism hasn’t only focused on SpaceX.
The Tesla founder has called for Amazon to be broken up, calling it a “monopoly.”
Another point of contention between the two billionaires has been over who is the richest of them all, as they have been swapping the number one spot on the Forbes list for years.
Musk has mocked Bezos by tweeting silver medal emojis at him, and also told Forbes he planned on sensing him: “a giant statue of the digit ‘2’ to Jeffrey B., along with a silver medal.”
The Tesla CEO has admitted he gets a kick out of provoking Bezos, who he says “takes himself too seriously.”
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“In some ways, I’m trying to goad him into spending more time at Blue Origin so they make more progress,” Musk told the Financial Times.
“As a friend of mine says, he should spend more time at Blue Origin and less time in the hot tub.”
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