Power Players

Elon Musk calls Jeff Bezos a 'copycat' on Twitter, for launching satellites

Share
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., smiles while speaking to members of the media outside federal court in New York, U.S., on Thursday, April 4, 2019.
Natan Dvir | Bloomberg | Getty Images

On Tuesday, Elon Musk tweeted a message to Jeff Bezos.

In response to an article from the MIT Technology Review that announced Amazon's plans to launch more than 3,000 internet-providing satellites, Musk called Bezos a copycat, with the "cat" portion of the word replaced with a cat emoji.

Copycat tweet

Presumably, that's because in February 2018, Musk's SpaceX launched satellites to provide "global broadband" to the "least served" areas around the world. 

Today's Falcon launch carries 2 SpaceX test satellites for global broadband. If successful, Starlink constellation will serve least served.

And according to CNBC, Bezos hired a SpaceX executive, Rajeev Badyal, to run the Amazon's satellite project after Musk fired him.

There also seems to be a friendly competitive spirit between Musk and Bezos when it comes to their aerospace businesses, SpaceX and Blue Origin. 

Last year, Bezos wished SpaceX luck with a Falcon Heavy launch. Musk's response then, too, was cheeky — he included an emoji blowing a kiss along with his thanks. Bezos then tweeted rocket emojis back at Musk. 

Thanks tweet

Rockets tweet

Musk and Bezos, after all, are both billionaires with a mission to make it possible for people to live in space.

Fundamentally, SpaceX's goal is to build re-usable rockets and spacecraft so humans can inhabit other planets, namely Mars.

For Musk, life on Mars would start with a single outpost: "Build up the base, starting with one ship, then multiple ships, then start building out the city, then making the city bigger, and even bigger. And yeah, over time terraforming Mars and making it really a nice place to be," he said in September.

Bezos's Blue Origin is focused on building the infrastructure to make it possible for future generations of humans to iterate on space technology and build new companies inexpensively.

Bezos imagines a future where humans live in free-floating space pod colonies.

Amazon, Blue Origin and representatives for Bezos and Musk did not immediately respond to CNBC Make It's request for comment.

See also:

Jeff Bezos: Forget Mars, humans will live in these free-floating space pod colonies

Elon Musk defends plans to build a community on Mars after downbeat NASA report

Bezos hired a SpaceX vice president to run Amazon's satellite internet project after Musk fired him

Here's what it will be like to travel to Mars in Elon Musk's spaceship
VIDEO1:2601:26
Here's what it will be like to travel to Mars in Elon Musk's spaceship