CAPE CANAVERAL: Jeff Bezos does not think SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will use his close ties with US President-elect Donald Trump to undercut Bezos’ rival space company Blue Origin, and was “very optimistic” about the incoming administration’s space agenda. The inaugural launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, tasked with eventually launching the company’s moon lander for NASA, was due early on Monday after several delays, but was postponed for at least another day due to a last-minute issue with the vehicle.

New Glenn is a 30-storey-tall rocket that is expected to chip away at SpaceX’s market dominance and kickstart Blue Origin’s long-delayed entrance in the satellite launch business. “Elon has been very clear that he’s doing this for the public interest and not for his personal gain. And I take him at face value,” Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, told Reuters on Sunday.

Musk, who has spent more than a quarter billion dollars to help elect Trump, has had the latter’s ear on space matters. Last month, Musk said the US should send missions straight to Mars instead of to the moon first, fueling industry concerns of a major shakeup to NASA’s space exploration program.

“My own opinion is that we should do both - we need to go to the moon and we should go to Mars,” Bezos said, when asked if he was concerned about changes to NASA’s moon program.

“What we shouldn’t do is start and stop things. We should continue with the lunar program for sure,” Bezos said. Trump in his second term as president is expected to make sweeping changes to NASA’s moon program and focus heavily on sending missions to Mars.

Amazon has donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and will stream the event on its Prime Video service. Bezos, Amazon’s founder and executive chairman, has met with Trump but told Reuters “we really haven’t talked about space.” Shifts in political priorities from new US presidents have killed ambitious national space programs in the past. Former President George HW Bush’s Space Exploration Initiative, a crewed moon program, was ended by his successor President Bill Clinton’s policy that favored robotic probes. NASA’s multibillion-dollar moon program, Artemis, was largely spawned by Trump’s first administration, and its goal of putting humans on the moon later this decade - for the first time since the Apollo program - was embraced by President Joe Biden.

Blue Origin, founded by Bezos in 2000, has a $3 billion contract with NASA to land humans on the moon under Artemis, following missions by SpaceX’s Starship, Musk’s fully reusable rocket in development that is designed to put humans and cargo on both the moon and Mars.

Trump, wooed by development milestones with SpaceX’s Starship, has fixated on sending missions to Mars in recent months at political rallies, suggesting he would change course on NASA’s flagship space exploration agenda. “All of these programs take longer than any one presidential administration,” Bezos said. “So you do need continuity in these programs if you’re going to see progress be made.” — Reuters