Elon Musk says Jeff Bezos 'retired to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX' after Amazon protested a Starlink expansion

• Elon Musk said Jeff Bezos "retired to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX."
• His tweet came after Amazon's Kuiper filed an FCC protest letter about SpaceX's Starlink network.
• Bezos, Amazon's founder and executive chairman, stepped down as CEO in July.

Elon Musk on Friday took a jab at Jeff Bezos after an Amazon subsidiary protested SpaceX's plans for more Starlink satellites.

Musk, SpaceX's CEO, tweeted that Bezos, Amazon's founder and executive chairman, had "retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX." Musk misspelled Bezos' name as "Besos."

Bezos stepped down as Amazon's CEO in July.

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-Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 27, 2021

Musk's tweet was in response to an article about Kuiper, Amazon's satellite-internet subsidiary, filing a protest letter to the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday about SpaceX's plans to expand its Starlink network of internet satellites.

SpaceX has proposed sending nearly 30,000 satellites into orbit for its second-generation Starlink, adding to its 1,740 satellites already in space.

Kuiper said in the letter that SpaceX broke the rules by proposing two configurations for the satellite constellation rather than just one. SpaceX had said the second proposal was a backup in case the FCC rejected the first.

"SpaceX's novel approach of applying for two mutually exclusive configurations is at odds with both the Commission's rules and public policy," Mariah Dodson Shuman, Kuiper's corporate counsel, wrote in the FCC letter.

The letter is not a lawsuit.

This isn't the first time one of Bezos' companies has argued against SpaceX.

Earlier this year, Blue Origin, Bezos' rocket company, filed a complaint against NASA and sued the agency over its awarding SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to send humans to the moon. NASA said it has put SpaceX's contract on pause so it can assess the suit.

The two billionaires have been known for making digs at each other. Musk has called Bezos a copycat and mocked Blue Origin's space flights and moon lander.

After SpaceX won the NASA contract, Blue Origin posted infographics on its website that appeared to contrast its Blue Moon lunar lander and SpaceX's "immensely complex & high risk" Starship, Insider's Morgan McFall-Johnsen reported.