SPACE WARS: SPACEX VS BLUE ORIGIN


The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk has been part of a long-running heated rivalry with the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos over leading humanity towards the solar system. Blue Origin was founded in 2000 by Bezos and 2 years later SpaceX was established. Since then both the companies have come a long way. In April 2021, SpaceX was picked up by NASA to make the vehicle for carrying Artemis Astronauts to the moon by 2024. After Blue Origin's Protests, which were denied by the US government, a lawsuit was filed against NASA by Blue Origin stating that the contract granted to SpaceX was unjust.


The feud can be traced to when the two business giants met over dinner back in 2004. The two had similar ambitions about space and discussed it over a meal which did not go very well. Elon Musk began Space X with the dream to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars and Bezos started Blue Origin with his idea of establishing colonies in space. Years later, in 2013, SpaceX tried to get exclusive rights over NASA Launchpad. Blue Origin thereby filed a formal complaint to prevent SpaceX from getting the exclusive rights and instead proposed the idea of using the launchpad for all launch companies. 


Musk took a swing at Bezos with words stating that Blue Origin hasn’t achieved much in developing the ‘reliable suborbital spacecraft’ in the past 10 years (at that time). At that time SpaceX had already sent the first spacecraft to the ISS in the previous year.


In 2014, the two again got into a feud. Blue Origin was granted a patent for sea landing of space launch vehicles and associated systems. This patent for drone ships which are now used for landing rocket boosters prompted SpaceX to file a petition which asked for not considering the technology and for the patent to be removed. This meant that if SpaceX wanted to use this technology which has been there for decades as stated by them, they would have to pay Blue Origins for it. SpaceX finally succeeded in 2016, when the judge sided with them, asking Blue Origins to withdraw most of the claim from that patent. The feud has not appeared to be ending anytime soon since then.



Since then, both Musk and Bezos have been seen mocking each other on Twitter in various incidents. They got into an argument about the meaning of used rocket, landed rocket, and space rocket by the end of 2015. When SpaceX landed the Falcon 9 first stage, it gave rise to more twitter battles such as Jeff Bezos tweeting “Welcome to the club”. Musk also acknowledged the memes which were made on Jeff Bezos’s trip to space, giving a laughing reaction to those. 


Though Bezos has stopped calling out Musk openly, working towards the goals and maintaining a business rivalry rather than a personal one. Musk has also targeted Amazon, calling it a monopoly and talking about breaking it.


Both the companies have experienced success meanwhile with the rivalry continuing parallelly. In May, SpaceX launched two NASA astronauts into space. SpaceX has shown considerable dominance as far as Blue Origins is concerned. Musk has achieved a lot like sending private citizens to ISS, landed a rocket the size of a 15 storey building to be exact in the middle of the ocean on a drone ship, and is launching its prototype of the largest and most powerful rocket to be called “Starship”. Whereas Blue Origins has recently made it to the headlines with the launch of Star Trek actor – William Shatner into Space.


At the beginning of 2021, NASA gave the lunar lander contract to SpaceX, which halted the pace of working at Blue Origin. In return, Blue Origins has filed a suit against the US government asking them to reconsider the deal which has recently been delayed which prompted Musk to comment “you can’t sue your way to the moon”. Bezos has stepped down from his position of CEO at Amazon to fully commit to Blue Origins and his dream of making colonies in space.


Recently, Musk made it to the headlines for talking about sending Bezos a giant statue of number 2 and a silver medal for beating him in the race of being the richest person. This may look kiddish but what is the point of having all that money if you can’t even make fun of a fellow business rival with similar dreams. While there are other problems in the world like poverty, hunger, calamities, etc, both the business giants are busy dealing with future issues which may or may not prove favorable for humanity. It looks like the planet is not enough for their ambitions as they look forward to chasing the sky, literally.


Hiteshi Sharma
B.Com (H)
Second Year

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