Elon Musk throws another dig at Jeff Bezos’ approach to space: ‘You cannot sue your w

[reporter2]

Elon Musk throws another dig at Jeff Bezos’ approach to space: ‘You cannot sue your way to the moon’

Sep 29 2021


Elon Musk repeated prior criticisms of fellow billionaire space mogul Jeff Bezos, as their companies continue to battle in federal court and in front of regulators.
“You cannot sue your way to the moon, no matter how good your lawyers are,” Musk said Tuesday at the CodeCon 2021 conference.
Musk said he has “not verbally” spoken to Bezos recently but does “subtweet, if you will,” adding that he has “encouraged him to emphasize getting to orbit.”

https://i.imgur.com/oIcJOAu.jpg

Elon Musk repeated prior criticisms of fellow billionaire space mogul Jeff Bezos, as their respective companies continue to battle in federal court and in front of regulators.

“I think I’ve expressed my thoughts on that front — I think he should put more of his energy into getting to orbit, [rather] than lawsuits,” Musk said Tuesday at the CodeCon 2021 conference in Beverly Hills, California.

“You cannot sue your way to the moon, no matter how good your lawyers are,” Musk added.

Amazon responded to Musk, in statement to CNBC on Wednesday.

“SpaceX has a long track record of suing the U.S. government on procurement matters and protesting various governmental decisions. It is difficult to reconcile that historical record with their recent position on others filing similar actions,” an Amazon spokesperson wrote.

Musk fired back on Twitter, less than an hour after CNBC published Amazon’s statement, arguing that there is a difference of intent between his company’s lawsuits and those from Bezos.

“SpaceX has sued to be *allowed* to compete, BO is suing to stop competition,” Musk tweeted.

Bezos’ Blue Origin is suing SpaceX, by way of NASA, in the U.S. Federal Court of Claims over a $2.9 billion astronaut lunar lander contract the agency awarded Musk’s company earlier this year. Blue Origin went on a public relations offensive in August after the Government Accountability Office shot down the company’s protest, with Bezos’ venture calling SpaceX’s Starship rocket an “immensely complex & high risk” way to deliver NASA astronauts to the moon.

Additionally, Amazon has filed protests to the Federal Communications Commission over SpaceX proposals for its Starlink satellite internet. Amazon is working on its own satellite internet, called Project Kuiper, and said in an August filing that SpaceX’s latest Starlink amendment “fails every test” of the FCC.

Musk’s company responded by pointing out that Amazon “has lodged objections to SpaceX on average about every 16 days this year,” with the CEO following up on Twitter.

“Filing legal actions against SpaceX is *actually* his full-time job,” Musk tweeted of Bezos on Sept. 1.

Musk, speaking to Recode editor-at-large Kara Swisher at CodeCon, said he didn’t know why Bezos wasn’t putting more effort into the space company he founded in 2000. While Bezos has doubled the amount of time he spends weekly at Blue Origin, as CNBC reported on Monday, his commitment is limited to two afternoons a week.

When Swisher asked Musk if he has recently spoken to Bezos, Musk said he has “not verbally” but does “subtweet, if you will.”

“I have encouraged him to emphasize getting to orbit,” Musk told Swisher.

Musk also said he thinks it is “cool” that fellow billionaires Bezos and Richard Branson are “spending money on the advancement of space.”

“I think [ultimately humanity should] want to be a space-faring civilization out there among the stars,” Musk said. “All these things that we see in science fiction — movies and books — we want those to be like real one day, not always fiction. So I think it’s good that people are spending their money advancing space technology.”

1443302848096178178

1443295389097005065

[reporter2]

Amazon sent us a 13-page PDF to prove Elon Musk is as litigious as Jeff Bezos

In response to the SpaceX CEO’s complaints about Amazon’s and Blue Origin’s legal fights

By Sean O'Kane

Sep 29, 2021

On Tuesday, Elon Musk accused Jeff Bezos and his companies of using the legal system to slow SpaceX’s progress during a talk at the 2021 Code Conference. Just a few hours later, Amazon — which is working on a competing satellite-based internet project — sent The Verge an unsolicited 13-page list of lawsuits, government petitions, and other legal actions that SpaceX has taken over the years.

“Attached is a list of some of the times SpaceX has sued the U.S. government on procurement matters and protested various governmental decisions,” a spokesperson for Amazon’s satellite division, Project Kuiper, wrote in the email. “It is difficult to reconcile their own historical record with their recent position on others filing similar actions.”

The list — published below, as Amazon insisted it was provided on the record — indeed contains a number of lawsuits filed by SpaceX, including some dating as far back as 2004, when Musk was still literally trying to get the startup off the ground. But it also includes more procedural actions, like times when SpaceX has filed opinions on how the government should allocate certain bands of spectrum for satellite communications — advocacy that has increased as SpaceX began building its Starlink satellite network.

All told, there are 39 actions documented in the list, split into three categories: litigation, protests with the Government Accountability Office, and oppositions filed with the FCC. Amazon made notes on each action, which stretch the table to be 13 pages long.

“We agree fully” with Amazon’s take, a spokesperson for Blue Origin said in an email to The Verge. “SpaceX is well aware, having benefitted from its own frequent protests and court filings against NASA and the U.S. Air Force, that such actions are common practice in the government procurement process.”

Moments after this story was published, Musk tweeted in response to Amazon’s statement that “SpaceX has sued to be *allowed* to compete, BO [Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin] is suing to stop competition.”

The list provides a window into just how closely Bezos’ company is tracking and scrutinizing SpaceX’s actions as it tries to compete in the nascent satellite internet market. It’s not the only list Amazon has compiled, either. Earlier this month, in a filing with the FCC, the company laid out a number of occasions where it believes Musk and SpaceX have bent or broken government rules:

“Try to hold a Musk-led company to flight rules? You’re ‘fundamentally broken,’” Amazon wrote in its filing, referring to the time Musk complained that the Federal Aviation Administration’s regulatory structure slowed down SpaceX’s operations. “Try to hold a Musk-led company to health and safety rules? You’re ‘unelected & ignorant,’” it added, referring to Musk’s beef with officials who sought to keep factories closed to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

What’s somewhat surprising is that Amazon offered this unsolicited response, since Musk’s comments at Tuesday’s Code Conference event were specifically in reference to Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, suing to stop NASA from awarding a lunar lander contract to SpaceX. “You cannot sue your way to the Moon, no matter how good your lawyers are,” he said.

Of course, Musk also recently criticized Amazon for taking legal action in the satellite internet space. In August, Musk maligned Bezos for stepping down from his CEO role at Amazon “in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX” after Amazon protested an expansion of Starlink.