Morale at Boeing headquarters can not be very high at the moment. It's almost been a week since aviation officials around the world grounded Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, after the battery system failed on two recent flights. Leave it to eccentric millionaire Elon Musk to make matters worse. On Friday, he posted a tweet offering a helping hand: "Maybe already under control, but Tesla & SpaceX"—two companies that Musk is a CEO and founder of—"are happy to help with the 787 lithium ion batteries."

But despite the occasional flitter of hope floating around on the tech Web, Musk was absolutely joking. And it wasn't even his best Boeing joke. In a November profile of Musk, he remarked to Esquire on whether SpaceX would beat Boeing in a NASA contract battle to shuttle Americans into orbit that, "Boeing will never get its hardware off the ground. You know the joke about Boeing: It puts the zero in being."

It's safe to say that with jabs like that (and hundreds of millions of dollars on the line), Boeing would rather Musk stay grounded, too.

Via GeekWire

Nate Hopper Associate editor Nate Hopper is an associate editor for Esquire magazine.

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