The flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship on an uncrewed trip to space and back may be history-making, but here’s a first that’s almost as big for social media: Jeff Bezos’ maiden tweet.
The rarest of beasts – a used rocket. Controlled landing not easy, but done right, can look easy. Check out video: https://t.co/9OypFoxZk3
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) November 24, 2015
As everyone surely knows by now, Bezos is the billionaire founder of Amazon, America’s biggest online retailer, as well as the Blue Origin rocket venture. He’s had his Twitter account since 2008 but never used it until today. As of 5:30 a.m. PT, he had more than 5,000 followers. That number is sure to grow as the day goes on. (The count passed the 23,000 mark by 10:30 a.m. PT.)
Among the followers hailing Bezos’ arrival in the Twitterverse: venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.
https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/669140233716236288
Bezos and Blue Origin also made a splash on the morning TV news shows:
We’re on @GMA @TODAYshow and @CBSThisMorning to talk about flying and landing the world’s first fully reusable rocket–hope you can join us!
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) November 24, 2015
One of Bezos’ biggest rivals in the space game is SpaceX’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk, who weighed in with an artful series of tweets that started out praising Blue Origin’s test flight but ended up downplaying it.
Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015
Getting to space needs ~Mach 3, but GTO orbit requires ~Mach 30. The energy needed is the square, i.e. 9 units for space and 900 for orbit.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015
Jeff maybe unaware SpaceX suborbital VTOL flight began 2013. Orbital water landing 2014. Orbital land landing next. https://t.co/S6WMRnEFY5
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015
But credit for 1st reusable suborbital rocket goes to X-15 https://t.co/LSb0f8FLJd
And Burt Rutan for commercialhttps://t.co/TGWlNjsyQz— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015
Leave it to Elon Musk to work a rocket-science lesson into 140-character bites. Does this presage a tweet-off between space billionaires? Stay tuned.
