"Very optimistic"

Trump’s closeness to Musk not a threat to Bezos

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos does not see the close relationship between SpaceX boss Elon Musk and future US President Donald Trump as a threat to his space company Blue Origin. In an interview on Sunday, Bezos was "very optimistic" about the future US government's space agenda.

"Elon has made it very clear that he is acting in the public interest and not for personal gain. And I take him at his word," Bezos said.

Blue Origin and SpaceX have been competing fiercely in the commercial space sector for years. While SpaceX has already successfully deployed rockets and spaceships for NASA on several occasions, Blue Origin is still in the development phase for orbital flights.

Maiden flight postponed again
A maiden flight of Blue Origin's "New Glenn" rocket announced for Monday was postponed once again. The approximately 100-metre-high rocket was due to take off from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in the US state of Florida and the launch vehicle was to land on a ship in the Atlantic during the test flight. However, the launch attempt was aborted in order to fix a problem with a subsystem, according to reports.

A new potential launch date was not initially given. The test flight had already been postponed for several days due to unfavorable conditions.

Musk has an advantage
The appointment of Musk to Trump's board of economic advisors and the nomination of Jared Isaacman as head of NASA have triggered speculation about advantages for SpaceX. Isaacman is a confidant of Musk and has already taken part in several private SpaceX space flights.

Musk is currently clearly in the lead with SpaceX in commercial space travel. Commercial satellite operators as well as the Pentagon and the US space agency NASA use SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets. Competitors such as United Launch Alliance, Arianespace and Rocket Lab are far behind.