Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg takes playful jab at Elon Musk's rocket-launched Tesla

CHICAGO: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg (in pic) lauded the energy and investment that billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are spurring in aerospace, but threw a playful jab to underscore the company’s “steady Eddie” reputation and deep roots in space exploration.

While Boeing doesn’t plan to launch cars into space anytime soon, “We might pick up the one out there and bring it back,” Muilenburg said on Thursday at a Politico Space Forum. It was an apparent dig at the cherry-red Tesla Roadster that Musk launched into deep space aboard the first flight of Space Exploration Technologies’ Falcon Heavy in early February.

Boeing and Musk’s SpaceX are developing rival commercial capsules to take humans into orbit under a Nasa programme that aims to end the US reliance on Russian rockets to send astronauts to orbit. Both companies are behind schedule as they race to begin flights to the International Space Station before NASA runs out of purchased seats aboard Soyuz craft at the end of 2019.