Meow! Elon Musk calls Jeff Bezos a satellite copycat — and gets called out

The rivalry between SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has surfaced on Twitter. Again. (Musk Photo: TED via YouTube; Bezos Photo: GeekWire / Kevin Lisota)

The fur is flying in the broadband internet satellite race.

It all started when we found out that Amazon was planning its own 3,236-satellite constellation to provide global internet access. The campaign, known as Project Kuiper, is likely to compete with SpaceX’s long-running Starlink project to put thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit and do pretty much the same thing. SpaceX’s operation in Redmond, Wash., was set up in 2015 to lead the Starlink development effort.

The fact that Amazon recruited engineers who worked on Starlink in Redmond but were reportedly thrown off the project last year by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk added insult to injury.

On Tuesday, Musk weighed in on Project Kuiper with a catty remark on Twitter:

.@JeffBezos copy