Jeff Bezos complimented Elon Musk's Starship rocket launch - which exploded on landing - and offered congratulations to the entire SpaceX team

• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Wednesday complimented SpaceX on its first high-altitude test of its prototype Starship spacecraft, which ended with the rocket exploding.
• "Anybody who knows how hard this stuff is is impressed by today's Starship test," Bezos said.
• Bezos owns his own space-exploration company, Blue Origin, and has displayed a rivalry with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO and the world's richest person, on Wednesday congratulated SpaceX on the test launch of its Starship rocket, which ended in an explosion on the launchpad.

"Anybody who knows how hard this stuff is is impressed by today's Starship test. Big congrats to the whole @SpaceX team. I'm confident they'll be back at it soon," Bezos said in an Instagram post with a somewhat out-of-focus photo of the Starship rocket.

A post shared by Jeff Bezos (@jeffbezos)

SpaceX conducted its first high-altitude test of its prototype Starship rocket ship on Wednesday. The 16-story-tall Starship - designed to eventually fulfill CEO Elon Musk's dream of taking humans to Mars -was expected to fly 41,000 feet into the sky, but it's not clear whether it reached that altitude.

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The spacecraft exploded dramatically on landing - but the explosion was not unexpected. Musk had said he thought there was a two-in-three chance the test would fail.

Bezos also owns a space-exploration company, called Blue Origin, that's competing with SpaceX and Dynetics to land NASA astronauts on the moon.

Over the weekend, Bezos showed off a video of the company's lunar-landing engine, the BE-7, firing its fourth successful test. "This is the engine that will take the first woman to the surface of the Moon," Bezos said.

A post shared by Jeff Bezos (@jeffbezos)

Bezos and Musk, who in November became the second-richest person in the world, have displayed something of a rivalry.

Musk has accused Bezos of copying business ideas, and while Bezos has not overtly attacked Musk, he has criticized the idea of sending humans to live on Mars, calling it "unmotivating."