Jeff Bezos said in an interview with Reuters on Sunday that he did not think SpaceX CEO Elon Musk would use his close ties to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to undermine his space company Blue Origin, adding that he was "very optimistic" about the incoming administration's space program.
"Elon was very clear that he was doing this in the public interest, not for personal gain," said Bezos, who is the founder of SpaceX rival Blue Origin. in the space industry.
Bezos is at Cape Canaveral in Florida for the first launch of the New Glenn rocket, which is expected to weaken SpaceX's dominance in the market and kick off Blue Origin's long-delayed entry into satellite launches.
Musk, who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help Trump's re-election, is influential on space issues and last month said the United States should send a mission directly to Mars instead of first to the moon, raising concerns about the future programs of the space agency NASA, Reuters reported.
“My personal opinion is that we should do both – we need to go to the moon and we need to go to Mars“, Bezos said in response to a question about whether he was worried about possible changes to NASA's lunar exploration program.
“What we shouldn't do is stop things. We should continue with the lunar program for sure“, Jeff Bezos said.
In his second term, US President-elect Donald Trump is expected to make major changes to NASA's lunar exploration program and focus heavily on sending missions to Mars, Reuters reports.