Elon Musk had earlier said that SpaceX was dropping its Mars plans in favour of a more immediate moon mission, and this appears to have sparked off a space race with a fellow billionaire.
Shortly after Musk’s announcement that SpaceX has shifted its primary focus to building a lunar city, Jeff Bezos took to X to post a striking black-and-white image of a tortoise, with no accompanying text. The cryptic post quickly ignited speculation across social media about its meaning.
One X user, going by the handle @canraptor_, offered an interpretation that gained significant traction: “People are confused, so let me shed some light. Ever hear the tale of the Tortoise and the Hare? SpaceX is the hare, quick, active, but easily distracted by Mars and AI. Blue Origin is the tortoise, slow but methodical, dead set on the main goal, The Moon. Bezos clearly implies here that they will beat SpaceX to The Moon. Any response @elonmusk? I would not let him swing at you like that if I were you.”
Musk responded with characteristic candor and a surprising dose of humility: “They might land something on the Moon before SpaceX and that’s fine by me. I will be one of the first to congratulate them. However, what really matters for the future is being able to land millions of tons of equipment and people to build a self-growing city on the Moon. In this respect, perhaps we are be more the tortoise than the hare for now.”
The exchange comes as Blue Origin has indeed been making significant strides toward lunar missions. The company is accelerating its Moon efforts through its Blue Moon lunar lander program for NASA’s Artemis missions, having pivoted away from space tourism to focus on these objectives.
Blue Origin is developing two versions of its lander: the Blue Moon MK1, a cargo variant designed to deliver 3 metric tons to the lunar surface with a pathfinder mission targeted for late 2026, and the larger Blue Moon MK2, a crewed lander designed to carry four astronauts for the Artemis V mission scheduled for 2030. The MK1 is currently undergoing thermal vacuum testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
To prioritize these lunar ambitions, Blue Origin has paused its New Shepard suborbital tourism flights for at least two years, redirecting resources toward orbital and lunar development. The company leads a “National Team” that includes aerospace heavyweights like Lockheed Martin, Draper, Boeing, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics. And with both billionaires now laser-focused on the Moon, the new space race appears to be heating up—this time with a lunar finish line rather than a Martian one.