Elon Musk on Friday took to Twitter to call out fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos after Amazon’s satellite broadband company, Kuiper Systems, urged the FCC to dismiss SpaceX‘s plans for more Starlink satellites.
Musk, CEO of SpaceX, wrote, “Turns out Bezos retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against Space X …”
Bezos officially stepped down as CEO of Amazon on July 5.
Turns out Besos retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 27, 2021
In its submission to the FCC, SpaceX proposed launching almost 30,000 additional satellites into space as part of its second-generation Starlink, which would join the 1,740 already in orbit.
Kuiper protested the plan in a letter to the FCC, stating that SpaceX violated codes by requesting two satellite configurations, as opposed to just one.
“SpaceX’s novel approach of applying for two mutually exclusive configurations is at odds with both the Commission’s rules and public policy,” wrote Mariah Dodson Shuman, Kuiper’s corporate counsel.
Earlier this month, Bezos’ commercial spaceflight company Blue Origin filed a lawsuit against NASA after losing a government contract that would have allowed the firm to fly astronauts to the Moon. That contract instead went to SpaceX, which is now experiencing delays on the project in part due to Bezos’ lawsuit.
In case you missed it, SpaceX has shipped more than 100,000 Starlink terminals to customers.
