Elon Musk Trolls Jeff Bezos for Losing NASA Contract to SpaceX: ‘Can’t Get It Up’

Michael LucianoApr 27th, 2021, 4:28 pm
 

Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

The unspoken and perhaps subconscious contest among billionaires to see whose rocket can best penetrate the deep expanses of space is coming to a head.

Earlier this month NASA announced it had chosen Elon Musk’s SpaceX to bring its next astronauts to the moon, perhaps as early as 2024. The contract is valued at $2.9 billion.

That didn’t sit well with Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin and a third bidder called Dynetics filed protests with the Government Accountability Office, claiming NASA changed the bidding rules late in the process. Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith told The New York Times, “We felt that these errors needed to be addressed and remedied.”

News of the filings seemed to delight Musk, who took to Twitter on Monday to channel his inner middle schooler by saying Bezos and Blue Origin “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol”.

Such schoolyard humor is old hat for Musk, who last June tweeted to inform his tens of millions of followers that it was “69 days after 4/20.”

Just days later, Musk fired off an especially juvenile missive about the Securities and Exchange Commission, with which Musk and his auto company Tesla had settled a fraud suit. In that case, the SEC filed charges against Musk and Tesla after he tweeted that he was considering taking the publicly traded automaker private at $420 a share. Musk said he had “funding secured” for such the move, but subsequent investigations turned up no evidence this claim was true. The episode soured Musk, who invited his followers to speculate what the SEC could do with its time.

With an estimated net worth of $199 billion as of this writing, Bezos is the world’s richest person. Earlier in the year Musk briefly overtook him for that distinction when Tesla’s stock price skyrocketed before coming back down (closer) to Earth. Musk’s net worth currently stands at $189 billion.

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Michael Luciano - Senior Editor

Mike is a Mediaite senior editor who covers the news in primetime. Follow him on Bluesky.