Space race billionaires stick together after William's jibe: Elon Musk puts feud with Jeff Bezos to one side as he congratulates Amazon founder for sending Star Trek actor Shatner to space... hours after prince's criticism

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Putting their long-running feud to one side for a moment, Elon Musk congratulated Jeff Bezos for the 'cool' decision to send Star Trek's William Shatner into space.

The rare show of solidarity came hours after Prince William offered an unexpected rebuke of the pair's race to leave Earth during a BBC Newscast interview.

The Duke of Cambridge, 39, said the world's greatest minds should be 'fixed on trying to repair this planet', rather than taking steps towards a life on another.

The support between the pair of space-focused billionaires is a rare reprieve in their long-running rivalry, which is thought to date back to a bad meeting in 2004.

Since then, the duo have clashed repeatedly — with notable battles including a dispute over access to a NASA launch pad and a patent for drone ship technology.

In recent years, the billionaires have fired salvos at each other publicly on Twitter, with Musk mocking Bezos earlier this week for losing his spot as wealthiest man.

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Putting their long-running feud to one side for a moment, Elon Musk congratulated Jeff Bezos for the 'cool' decision to send Star Trek actor William Shatner into space. Pictured: Mr Musk as seen earlier this month at his SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California

'Congrats, was cool to send @WilliamShatner to space,' Mr Musk tweeted on Thursday afternoon, in response to a video of the actor and his fellow travellers exiting the Blue Origin capsule after it landed safely in the West Texas desert

The rare show of solidarity came hours after Prince William appeared to offer an unexpected rebuke of the pair's race to leave Earth during a BBC Newscast interview. Pictured: Star Trek actor William Shatner (left) with Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos (right) prior the latter's firm sending the former into space on board the New Shepard rocket earlier this week

'Congrats, was cool to send @WilliamShatner to space,' Mr Musk tweeted on Thursday afternoon, in response to a video of the actor and his fellow travellers exiting the Blue Origin capsule after it landed safely in the West Texas desert.

Prior to the launch, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO had also commented 'Godspeed Captain' on a NASA tweet similarly wishing the actor the best on his spaceflight.

Shatner is best known for playing Captain James T. Kirk in the original Star Trek series created by Gene Roddenberry that premiered in September 1966.

While the billionaires closed ranks, Shatner himself responded to Prince William's comment on Entertainment Tonight by suggesting that the royal had 'got the wrong idea'.

The actor argued that space tourism is the first step to relocating polluting industries off of the Earth — and the creation of power stations in orbit.

Shatner, 90, became the oldest person to travel into space on Wednesday, experiencing three minutes of weightlessness before returning back to Earth.

He travelled on board the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket with paying passengers Chris Boshuizen, Glen de Vries and Blue Origin vice-president, Audrey Powers.

The actor returned from his first real trip into the final frontier with a message, which he delivered during a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

'What we were looking down upon is Mother Earth and it needs protecting in the world needs to see this,' he said.

'That point of view is you're looking down on the earth and looking up into space but you're also looking up at the future and looking down at the past.' 

Glen de Vries, the co-founder of the clinical research platform Medidata, added that the crew had a 'had a moment of camaraderie' when the capsule reached the edge of space — some 62 miles above the Earth's surface.

'We actually just put our hands together,' he said.

Powers added that they 'wanted to memorialize being together, there.'

'And then we enjoyed the view as much as we can,' de Vries went on to note.

Despite the cordial tone of Musk's message for Bezos on Thursday, the signs of the two billionaire's bitter rivalry were in full force earlier this week.

The Amazon founder tweeted on Monday a photograph of the May 31, 1999 cover of the US weekly magazine Barron's. 

Titled 'Amazon.bomb', the front page story criticised the burgeoning's firm model, calling Bezos himself 'another middleman' and suggesting that selling other people's products was not the path to online success. 

The Duke of Cambridge, 39, said in a BBC interview that the world's greatest minds should be 'fixed on trying to repair this planet', rather than taking steps towards a life on another

Prior to the launch, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO had also commented 'Godspeed Captain' on a NASA tweet similarly wishing the actor the best on his spaceflight. Mr Shatner is best known for playing Captain James T. Kirk in the original Star Trek series created by Gene Roddenberry

Despite the cordial tone of Musk's message for Bezos on Thursday, the signs of the two billionaire's bitter rivalry were in full force earlier this week. As Bezos celebrated Amazon's success in the face of its early detractors on Monday, Musk took the opportunity to remind his rival that he recently unseated him from the position at the world's wealthiest person

'Listen and be open, but don't let anybody tell you who you are,' Bezos tweeted,

'This was just one of the many stories telling us all the ways we were going to fail,' the billionaire continued, adding that today Amazon finds itself as one of the world's most successful firms. 

In a sassy response, Musk tweeted a single emoji — a silver, second-place medal.

This choice appears to be a reference to comments the SpaceX CEO made in a recent interview with Forbes, in which he joked that he would send Bezos a silver medal and a giant number '2' after he overtook his rival again as the richest person.

According to the Bloomberg 'Billionaire's Index', Musk is now valued at $223 billion, compared to Bezos' $191 billion — however, the pair have traded the title of world's wealthiest back and forth several times over the past year. 

THE BILLIONAIRE SPACE RACE: HOW BRANSON, MUSK AND BEZOS ARE VYING FOR GALACTIC SUPREMACY

Jeff Bezos in front of Blue Origin's space capsule

Dubbed the 'NewSpace' set, Jeff Bezos, Sir Richard Branson and Elon Musk all say they were inspired by the first moon landing in 1969, when the US beat the Soviet Union in the space race, and there is no doubt how much it would mean to each of them to win the 'new space race'.

Amazon founder Bezos had looked set to be the first of the three to fly to space, having announced plans to launch aboard his space company Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft on July 20, but Branson beat him to the punch.

The British billionaire became Virgin Galactic Astronaut 001 when he made it to space on a suborbital flight nine days before Bezos - on July 11 in a test flight.

Bezos travelled to space on July 20 with his younger brother Mark, Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old physics student whose dad purchased his ticket, and pioneering female astronaut Wally Funk, 82.

Although SpaceX and Tesla founder Musk has said he wants to go into space, and even 'die on Mars', he has not said when he might blast into orbit - but has purchased a ticket with Virgin Galactic for a suborbital flight.

SpaceX became the first of the 'space tourism' operators to send a fully civilian crew into orbit, with the Inspiration4 mission funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman. 

His flight was on a Dragon capsule and SpaceX rocket built by space-obsessed billionaire, Elon Musk and took off for the three day orbital trip on September 16 - going higher than the International Space Station. 

SpaceX appears to be leading the way in the broader billionaire space race with numerous launches carrying NASA equipment to the ISS and partnerships to send tourists to space by 2021.  

On February 6 2018, SpaceX sent rocket towards the orbit of Mars, 140 million miles away, with Musk's own red Tesla roadster attached. 

Elon Musk with his Dragon Crew capsule

SpaceX has also taken two groups of astronauts to the |International Space Station, with crew from NASA, ESA and JAXA, the Japanese space agency. 

SpaceX has been sending batches of 60 satellites into space to help form its Starlink network, which is already in beta and providing fast internet to rural areas. 

Branson and Virgin Galactic are taking a different approach to conquering space. It has repeatedly, and successfully, conducted test flights of the Virgin Galactic's Unity space plane. 

The first took place in December 2018 and the latest on May 22, with the flight accelerating to more than 2,000 miles per hour (Mach 2.7). 

More than 600 affluent customers to date, including celebrities Brad Pitt and Katy Perry, have reserved a $250,000 (£200,000) seat on one of Virgin's space trips. The final tickets are expected to cost $350,000.

Branson has previously said he expects Elon Musk to win the race to Mars with his private rocket firm SpaceX. 

Richard Branson with the Virgin Galactic craft

SpaceShipTwo can carry six passengers and two pilots. Each passenger gets the same seating position with two large windows - one to the side and one overhead.

The space ship is 60ft long with a 90inch diameter cabin allowing maximum room for the astronauts to float in zero gravity.

It climbs to 50,000ft before the rocket engine ignites. SpaceShipTwo separates from its carrier craft, White Knight II, once it has passed the 50-mile mark.

Passengers become 'astronauts' when they reach the Karman line, the boundary of Earth's atmosphere.

The spaceship will then make a suborbital journey with approximately six minutes of weightlessness, with the entire flight lasting approximately 1.5 hours.

Bezos revealed in April 2017 that he finances Blue Origin with around $1 billion (£720 million) of Amazon stock each year.

The system consists of a pressurised crew capsule atop a reusable 'New Shepard' booster rocket.    

At its peak, the capsule reached 65 miles (104 kilometres), just above the official threshold for space and landed vertically seven minutes after liftoff. 

Blue Origin are working on New Glenn, the next generation heavy lift rocket, that will compete with the SpaceX Falcon 9.