Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin accuses Elon Musk’s SpaceX of safety and pollution risks

Blue Origin, the space company owned by Jeff Bezos, and a competitor to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, filed a complaint with the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regarding the environmental impact of SpaceX’s Starship rocket launches, calling for a limit on how many times SpaceX can launch its new rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

Elon Musk humorously responded with a post on X (formerly Twitter).

What did Blue Origin say in the complaint?

Blue Origin highlighted that the launches could release dangerous chemicals into the air, produce loud noises, disturb nearby towns due to closed roads, and possibly harm people and property with explosions or debris, Interesting Engineering wrote.

It also said that Starship poses a threat to the Kennedy Space Center itself, where it uses a large site for manufacturing.

This comes at a time when the FAA is planning to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) before approving SpaceX to launch Starship, the world's biggest rocket, which has flown four times since April 2023 and has reached space twice, a Mashable report read.

Jeff Bezos vs Elon Musk: The timeline

Blue Origin was founded in 2000, just two years before SpaceX. However, it has only done short trips of just a few minutes into space, while SpaceX routinely sends astronauts to the International Space Station, reuses rocket boosters after every launch, and has even managed to make boosters land at sea, according to the article.

Blue Origin has long opposed the development of Starship, arguing that it is too unwieldy and uses too much fuel. Bezos sued NASA over its SpaceX contract in August 2021, but the lawsuit was shut down by a federal claims court, Futurism wrote, adding that NASA finally gave in last year and awarded Blue Origin a separate lunar lander contract.

Similarly in 2021, Amazon’s satellite broadband company Kuiper Systems also attempted to prevent SpaceX from expanding Starlink.

Musk accused Bezos of retiring "in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX" in response.

Starship had already been through a thorough environmental assessment by the FFA for its South Texas operations, with the regulator announcing earlier this month that it had issued SpaceX, its fourth test flight license.