SpaceX founder Elon Musk has attacked fellow billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos over a number of complaints filed by Bezos’ Blue Origin against SpaceX. According to Musk, Bezos retired from Amazon so he could make filing lawsuits against SpaceX his “full-time job.”
The Verge reports that Elon Musk has lashed out at Jeff Bezos following recent news of Bezos’ space exploration company Blue Origin suing NASA over a contract awarded to SpaceX and a recent Amazon complaint relating to SpaceX satellites.
Jeff Bezos at Blue Origin press event
Elon Musk CEO of Tesla
Breitbart News previously reported that Bezos’ Blue Origin filed a complaint with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims over NASA’s handling of the Human Landing System program. Now, Amazon has reportedly urged the FCC to dismiss recently submitted plans by SpaceX to launch a number of satellites to power its internet service Starlink.
This week Musk took to his favorite social media platform, Twitter, to take shots at Bezos. Replying to a story about the recent Blue Origin complaint, Musk tweeted: “Turns out Besos [sic] retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX …”
Currently, Starlink has around 1,740 low earth orbit satellites which serve around 90,000 customers. SpaceX is preparing to launch 30,000 more second-generation satellites to improve Starlink and as a result, has to inform the FCC exactly where they’ll be positioned around the globe. Amazon alleges that SpaceX is now asking the FCC to approve two completely separate orbital configurations.
Mariah Dodson Shuman, corporate counsel for Amazon subsidiary Kuiper Systems, stated: “SpaceX’s novel approach of applying for two mutually exclusive configurations is at odds with both the Commission’s rules and public policy and we urge the Commission to dismiss this amendment.”
Shuman alleges that dealing with two separate satellite configurations “doubles the technical effort” faced by other operators such as Amazon’s Kuiper System which has not yet launched any satellites of its own. Other parties must review “interference and orbital debris concerns” caused by the two SpaceX satellite configurations,
Shuman believes that SpaceX should pick a singular satellite configuration and stick to it, and approving two separate configurations sets a worrying precedent that would allow future satellite operators to easily amend their own plans, making more work for other operators.
“Accordingly, the Commission should enforce its rules, dismiss SpaceX’s Amendment, and invite SpaceX to resubmit its amendment after settling on a single configuration for its Gen2 System,” Shuman stated.
Read more at the Verge here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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