Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos launch competing bids for NASA launchpad

This could be one of the most epic bid-offs in history. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla Motor’s Elon Musk are squaring up in a bid to get their hands on a former NASA space shuttle launchpad.

The men, each of which has his own private space company (Bezos owns Blue Origin while Musk is the founder of Space X), are after Launch Complex 39A in Florida’s Kennedy Space complex — the site of the first and last shuttle launches, along with a good few other significant events in NASA’s history.

With the space shuttle fleet now retired, its launchpads are surplus and NASA is looking to sell them to private buyers in a bid to save money, CNBC reports.

For either of the technology billionaires, getting their hands on the launchpad would be a massive win, especially given that both would be all too aware of how much building a launchpad from scratch costs.

As The Verge notes though, if Musk manages to claim the launchpad, it will give Space X an even bigger advantage over Blue Origin than it currently enjoys.

It already has two launchpads and a couple of successful flights to its name. Add to that the rapid progress it’s making with its reusable Grasshopper launch rocket and you have a company that’s made good on its intent to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the private space market.

Blue Origin meanwhile has been beset with a number of problems, including the crash of a prototype spacecraft in August 2011.

It is hoping to turn the launch pad into a multi-use facility, with the option of leasing it out to other companies. Space X meanwhile wants to use it to launch its Dragon space capsule.

Details of the bidding process are apparently shrouded in secrecy, although NASA apparently wants to complete the handover by 1 October, so we should know which billionaire’s won fairly soon.