Jeff Bezos’ Rocket Company Challenges NASA over SpaceX Moon Lander Deal(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
Jeff Bezos’ Rocket Company Challenges NASA over SpaceX Moon Lander Deal
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/science/spacex-moon-blue-origin.html
8 comments
>Bob Smith, chief executive of Blue Origin, said NASA’s decision was based on flawed evaluations of the bids — misjudging advantages of Blue Origin’s proposal and downplaying technical challenges in SpaceX’s. He also said NASA had placed a bigger emphasis on bottom-line cost than it said it would.
>“It’s really atypical for NASA to make these kinds of errors,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. “They’re generally quite good at acquisition, especially its flagship missions like returning America to the surface of the moon. We felt that these errors needed to be addressed and remedied.”
"it's obviously a mistake because they didn't throw money at lockheed, boeing, and us."
Edit: I wonder if this complaint will be used as a way for congresscritters to make NASA change their plans. Can't just call it a jobs program, but if you can allege an error on NASA's part, you've got a lot of cover to put your thumb on the scale.
>“It’s really atypical for NASA to make these kinds of errors,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. “They’re generally quite good at acquisition, especially its flagship missions like returning America to the surface of the moon. We felt that these errors needed to be addressed and remedied.”
"it's obviously a mistake because they didn't throw money at lockheed, boeing, and us."
Edit: I wonder if this complaint will be used as a way for congresscritters to make NASA change their plans. Can't just call it a jobs program, but if you can allege an error on NASA's part, you've got a lot of cover to put your thumb on the scale.
I wonder if SpaceX is going to be next to the moon either way, NASA contract or not...
The issue on Congress's side though is they can't just give money to a company outright. They'd hit all sorts of other laws preventing that.
There's plenty of ways to pressure/coerce NASA that are totally legal and easily covered for as due diligence.
They can change the budget in the next cycle to specify that NASA must add another contractor as a secondary for risk mitigation reasons. They can haul the administrators in front of committee and throw a bunch of concern around to cow NASA into revisiting its decision.
They can change the budget in the next cycle to specify that NASA must add another contractor as a secondary for risk mitigation reasons. They can haul the administrators in front of committee and throw a bunch of concern around to cow NASA into revisiting its decision.
They can do all of that but none of that will make up the technical gap between SpaceX and Bezos' hobby horse.