Bezos’ Blue Origin Launch Flops After He Shrugged Off Trump-Musk Bromance Threat to Space Race
The world’s second richest man suffered an embarrassing botched launch of his new rocket system just hours after shrugging off speculation he might be intimidated by Elon Musk having the incoming president’s ear on all things off-world.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space exploration company was due to fire off its New Glenn Rocket, widely seen as a potential competitor to Musk’s Falcon 9, in the small hours of Monday morning from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, only for the launch to be called off during the final minutes of the countdown due to unspecified technical difficulties.
On Sunday afternoon, the Amazon founder had insisted he remains “very optimistic” about his company’s prospects in the accelerating 21st century space race despite Donald Trump’s bromance with his rival wannabe-extraterrestrial-titan, Reuters reports.
Earlier in December, Musk called on the incoming U.S. government to prioritize his own aspirations for sending a mission to Mars rather than Bezos’ ambitions of launching a second crew to Earth’s moon following the first landing back in 1969.
“My own opinion is that we should do both—we need to go to the moon and we should go to Mars,” Bezos said on Sunday in response to questions about prospective changes to NASA’s programs.
He added, “What we shouldn’t do is start and stop things. We should continue the lunar program for sure.”
A new launch date has not yet been set for the New Glenn Rocket, which had already suffered several technical-related delays prior to Monday’s launch being called off.