Amazon founder Jeff Bezos does not often post on the social media site owned by his rival Elon Musk. But on Monday, Bezos shared a black and white image of a turtle emerging from the shadows on the X.
The photo, which included no text, may have surprised some observers. Yet for anyone familiar with Bezos’ privately owned space company, Blue Origin, the message was clear. The company’s coat of arms prominently features two tortoises, a reference to one of Aesop’s fables, “The Tortoise and the Hare”, in which the slow and steady Tortoise wins the race over a fast but overconfident Hare.
Bezos’ foray into turtle trolling on social media came about 12 hours after Musk made big waves in the space community by announcing that SpaceX was moving toward the Moon instead of Mars as a near-term destination. This represents a major change in Musk’s thinking, as the SpaceX founder has long talked about building a multi-planetary civilization on Mars.
Welcome to the club
This must have given Bezos some self-satisfaction. He also believes in human settlement in space, but has supported the idea that our spacefaring species should start on the Moon and then build orbital space habitats. In 2019, when unveiling his vision, Bezos talked about NASA’s goal of returning humans to the Moon through the Artemis program. “I love it,” Bezos said. “It’s the right thing to do. We can help meet that timeline but only because we started three years ago. It’s time to go back to the Moon – this time to stay.”
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