After focusing for much of his career on delivering packages to doorsteps, Jeff Bezos is turning his attention to delivering humans to the moon, and on Monday his commercial space venture showed just how seriously it’s taking its lunar ambitions.
Bezos’ Blue Origin filed a complaint against the U.S. government over NASA’s decision to award a $2.9 billion contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build what would be the first lunar lander to carry astronauts to the moon since the Apollo era.
The decision was previously the subject of a Blue Origin protest, which was denied by the Government Accountability Office on July 30. Blue Origin’s bid protest, filed Monday morning in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, escalates the issue in an attempt to find a more favorable outcome in the court system.
At stake, apart from the financial value of the contract, is the prestige of partnering with NASA on what promises to be a historic milestone for its Artemis moon exploration program. The goal is to take astronauts back to the moon as soon as 2024.
In the meantime, the situation has become a squabble. A Blue Origin infographic, for example, previously criticized SpaceX’s plan as “immensely complex & high risk.”
Referring to Blue Origin, Musk tweeted in response, “The sad thing is that even if Santa Claus suddenly made their hardware real for free, the first thing you’d want to do is cancel it.”
The sad thing is that even if Santa Claus suddenly made their hardware real for free, the first thing you’d want to do is cancel it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2021
In their bid, Blue Origin and its industry partners — Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper — proposed an enhanced version of the Apollo lunar lander. Another company, Dynetics, proposed a low-slung integrated design that would land on the surface and take off again.
SpaceX plans to build a customized version of its Starship super-rocket for the mission.
The Blue Origin team’s bid was valued at nearly $6 billion, or twice as high as SpaceX’s bid. Dynetics’ bid was in the range of $9 billion.
In court on Monday morning, Blue Origin asked for leave to file its suit under seal, so its exact claims aren’t known. However, in an accompanying motion, Blue Origin says the bid protest “challenges NASA’s unlawful and improper evaluation of proposals,” and refers to the decision to award a single contract, one of the issues cited in its GAO protest.
NASA originally had hoped to fund two of the three teams to continue work on their human landing systems, which would have provided a backup option. Agency officials cited congressional budget limits as one reason for making only one award.
Blue Origin and Dynetics both argued unsuccessfully to the GAO that a single award would diminish competition and technical redundancy.
As part of its original evaluation, NASA rated SpaceX’s proposal highest on technical grounds.
Includes previous reporting by Alan Boyle, GeekWire contributing editor.
