Elon and Rogozin : A twitter war of words

Forget Biden and Putin and their little snides at each other, the recent set of tweets by Elon Musk and Dmitry Rogozin was enough to set twitteraties aflutter, tweeting and speculating on what turned out to be a very public exchange of words and sentiments.

But the rivalry between these two is nothing new.

Rogozin, a seasoned politician and a former Russian Deputy Prime Minister is currently heading ROSCOSMOS — the Russian equivalent of NASA. NASA and Roscosmos have shared collaborative interetsts in rocket and satellite launches and other space exploration missions.

In 2014, when Russia faced its first round of economic sanctions after it annexed Crimea, Russians were understandibly miffed and pulled out of their offer to carry NASA astronauts on Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station — Rogozin went so far as to tweet in April 2014;

‘After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the international Space Station using a trampoline’

‘The trampoline is working’ was Elon Musk’s comeback four years later in May 2020, after his company Space-X successfully launched its first crew mission to the International Space Station — reminding Rogozin of his tart rejoinder in 2014.

NASA had been grooming private sector to fill the lack of its own shuttles since theirs retired in 2011 and NASA were left with little choice other than to use other…