Elon Musk just poured some rocket fuel on his space race against Jeff Bezos.
The billionaire Tesla boss — who also runs the private rocket company SpaceX — took to Twitter on Wednesday to blast a plan by Bezos’ rocket startup Blue Origin to launch a network of 3,000 internet satellites.
Musk responded to an MIT Technology Review story about the Bezos venture with the word “copy” followed by a cat emoji.
The Amazon CEO’s project, dubbed Project Kuiper, would launch thousands of satellites into low-Earth orbit to deliver internet access to underserved areas to cover more than 95 percent of the global population.
SpaceX, meanwhile, in February launched two prototype satellites into orbit after it got US approval for its own plan, dubbed Starlink, to create a network of roughly 12,000 internet-beaming satellites.
Musk’s Twitter jab comes just days after Blue Origin hired Rajeev Badyal, SpaceX’s former vice president of satellites, to lead Project Kuiper. Badyal ran the Starlink program at SpaceX but was reportedly canned by Musk after he grew impatient with the pace of development.
Musk has previously trolled Bezos on Twitter, including a reply in 2015 to a tweet from Bezos calling one of Blue Origin’s reusable rockets “the rarest of beasts.”
“Not quite ‘rarest,’” Musk tweeted in response. “SpaceX Grasshopper rocket did 6 suborbital flights 3 years ago & is still around.”