Jeff Bezos offers to send Donald Trump to space
Photo Credit: Jason Rhian / SpaceFlight Insider
The founder of Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, is relatively new to the Twitter universe, but that has not stopped him from gaining a huge following after his tweets regarding GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump.
Trump is well known in the Twittersphere for his Twitter “storms” commenting sessions that span numerous messages. This time, Trump decided to go after Bezos by commenting on Bezos’ ownership of The Washington Post and how that affects the tax bill at Amazon. None of what Trump has said could be verified, but that did not appear to slow the billionaire.
“The @washingtonpost, which loses a fortune, is owned by @JeffBezos for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company, @amazon.” (as noted on ABCNews.Go.Com).
Bezos waited for a time before responding to Trump’s comment. Despite having only sent out only three tweets in the history of his account, this fourth one struck back using Bezos’ space-related efforts:
“Finally trashed by @realDonaldTrump. Will still reserve him a seat on the Blue Origin rocket. #sendDonaldtospace”
The hashtag has been gaining in popularity but has not quite gone viral yet. Trump’s past and recent comments appear to have encouraged Trump’s detractors in sending him into space.
Tweets ranging from personal rants to images of ‘The Donald’ decked in space gear are now proliferating on Twitter and expanding throughout the rest of the Internet:
“Kathy Gordon @ilovetucker
@JeffBezos #sendDonaldtospace made my morning. Seriously. Do we need a go fund me to help with costs? @realDonaldTrump”
Bezos’ company Blue Origin just completed the first successful launch and recovery of their New Shepard craft. The vehicle traveled past the Kármán line (62 miles or 100 km), the accepted designated of where space begins. The rocket further made history when it returned for a vertical landing, something that caused a bit of a ruckus between Bezos and another billionaire – Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX.
This article was edited at 10:56 p.m. EST to include a link referencing Donald Trump’s Tweet.
Joe Latrell
Joe Latrell is a life-long avid space enthusiast having created his own rocket company in Roswell, NM in addition to other consumer space endeavors. He continues to design, build and launch his own rockets and has a passion to see the next generation excited about the opportunities of space exploration. Joe lends his experiences from the corporate and small business arenas to organizations such as Teachers In Space, Inc. He is also actively engaged in his church investing his many skills to assist this and other non-profit endeavors.
Surely your description of his “no profit” company Amazon is a typo, right?
Hi Frank,
That’s not “our description” – that’s what Donald Trump said via Twitter: “The @washingtonpost, which loses a fortune, is owned by @JeffBezos for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company, @amazon.”
Sincerely, Jason Rhian – Editor, SpaceFlight Insider
– hopefully a one way trip. I’ll pitch in for gas.
Neither one of them is going to advance space exploration and only continue to keep the U.S. trapped in LEO.
Hi Franklin,
It’s not that small. We had a revamp of the website recently and this feature got turned off. We’ve reactivated it, please review it now.
Sincerely and with much thanks, Jason Rhian – Editor, SpaceFlight Insider
Great to see BO working with ULA to advance affordable access to Cislunar with BE-4 and possibly BE-3 for ACES.
Sorry, forgot to add URLs originally:
http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/organizations/ula/ulas-president-tory-bruno-talks-companys-future/
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2826/1
Any claim that BO is “-working with ULA to advance affordable access to Cislunar-” does not hold water.
That is not what BO or ULA is doing. They are increasing payload to GEO and making up other stuff does not make it so.
“In terms of the next 100 launches, which Bruno joked may take as little as five years this time around, he expects to see a larger prevalence of smaller satellites and the establishment of habitats and economic activity in cislunar space ( the region of space that exists between the Earth and the Moon).
Development of these assets could allow humans to expand on the work currently being performed on the International Space Station, as well as what is being done with the numerous commercial ventures that relate to space.
Bruno expressed the view that humanity is on the threshold of a true space-based economy.”
The only significant revenue generator in space is GEO satellites. Whatever kind of PR Bruno and Bezos are advertising the truth is the SLS is the only path to BEO.