Business Insider
Elon Musk enjoyed a meme on Saturday poking fun at Jeff Bezos’ upcoming flight to the edge of space.
Musk commented “haha” under a meme posted on Twitter about Bezos’ flight. The meme shows Bezos talking to Musk about his flight, but with their faces superimposed onto Anakin Skywalker and Padme from “Star Wars: Episode II – Attack Of The Clones” – a popular meme format .
-Charly (@Charly923407591) July 17, 2021
The meme makes fun of the fact Jeff Bezos’ flight will be sub-orbital, meaning it will only just touch the edge of space before coming back down to Earth, rather than going into orbit.
Bezos is scheduled to fly onboard New Shepard, a spacecraft made by his company Blue Origin, on July 20.
Bezos’ flight is slated to fly just above the Krmn line, an imaginary line 62 miles above sea-level, which some use to define the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and space .
Bezos’ flight should take roughly 11 minutes , during which Bezos and the other passengers will experience approximately three minutes of weightlessness. Travelling with Bezos will be his brother Mark Bezos , 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk , and 18-year-old physics student Oliver Daeman .
Elon Musk has had a long-running rivalry with Bezos , as both billionaires own space exploration companies. Musk’s company SpaceX has a stated goal of one day transporting human beings to Mars, and Musk has said he wants to help colonise the red planet .
Musk has previously called Bezos’ Blue Origin a “copycat,” and made fun of the company’s proposed lunar lander Blue Moon comparing it to “blue balls.”
Recently, the two companies have clashed over a contract awarded to SpaceX by NASA in April, with Blue Origin lobbying Washington to allow NASA to give out more money to another company.
