The competition between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the commercial space industry forged ahead Friday.
In a Twitter trade, the billionaires fought over NASA’s Artemis Human Landing System (HLS).
“The Human Landing System program needs competition, not the delay of starting over,” Bezos’ Blue Origin wrote. “The National Team has an open architecture, deep experience, massive self-funded investments and a safe, low-risk design to return to the Moon. Let’s go. #Artemis”
“For the low, low price of … ?” Musk retorted early Friday morning.
NASA awarded Musk’s SpaceX the pined for $2.89 billion agreement for the advancement of the first commercial human lander that will land Artemis program astronauts on the moon in 2024.
Thus, Blue Origin and “The National Team” recorded a 50-page protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) over the decision in April.
Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith disclosed to The New York Times that the organization trusted NASA’s selection depended on imperfect assessments.
Another competitor, Dynetics, additionally filed its own protest.
The GAO is leading an examination concerning the issue that is scheduled to finish up by Aug. 4.
This isn’t the first time the pair have taken to social media to go head to head publicly.
Reacting to the Times’ report, Musk composed that Bezos and Blue Origin “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol.”
Already, Musk had considered Bezos a “copycat” after Amazon reported its aim to make a heavenly body of thousands of internet satellites and prodded Bezos over Blue Origin’s lunar lander, Blue Moon.
