Jeff Bezos, owner of aerospace company Blue Origin, is “very optimistic” about the incoming White House administration, despite President-elect Trump’s close ties with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Early Monday morning, Blue Origin scrubbed the launch of its New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral “to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue.” The company said on X that it is reviewing opportunities for the next launch attempt.
New Glenn is a 30-story-tall rocket that is expected to chip away at SpaceX’s market dominance and kickstart Blue Origin’s long-delayed entrance into the satellite launch business.
“Elon has been very clear that he’s doing this for the public interest and not for his personal gain. And I take him at face value,” Bezos told Reuters on Sunday.
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Musk, who spent more than a quarter billion dollars campaigning for Trump, has had the president-elect’s ear on space matters.
Last month, Musk said the U.S. should send missions straight to Mars instead of to the moon first, fueling industry concerns of a major shakeup to NASA’s space exploration program.
“My own opinion is that we should do both – we need to go to the moon and we should go to Mars,” Bezos said, when asked if he was concerned about changes to NASA’s moon program.
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“What we shouldn’t do is start and stop things. We should continue with the lunar program for sure,” he said.
Bezos, the chairman and founder of Amazon, is the second-richest man in the world with a net worth of $233.1 billion, according to Forbes.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMZN | AMAZON.COM INC. | 234.85 | -0.57 | -0.24% |
Amazon has donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and will stream the event on its Prime Video service. Bezos has met with Trump but told Reuters “we really haven’t talked about space.”
Trump, in his second term as president, is expected to make sweeping changes to NASA’s moon program and focus heavily on sending missions to Mars.
Trump established the U.S. Space Force when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act in December 2019, during his first administration.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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