Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin lunar lander lawsuit against NASA-SpaceX deal

The United States Federal Claims Court on Wednesday released a redacted version of Blue Origin’s lawsuit against Jeff Bezos against NASA over the lucrative lunar lander contract awarded to SpaceX by Elon Musk earlier this year.

“Historically a strong proponent of putting safety first, NASA inexplicably ignored key flight safety requirements for SpaceX alone, in order to select and award a SpaceX proposal that was assessed as extremely risky and extremely complex,” even before the waiver of safety requirements, “Blue Origin said in the lawsuit filed in August.

Blue Origin’s complaint came after the U.S. Government Accountability Office dismissed the company’s protest, upholding NASA’s decision.

The congressional watchdog’s decision supported the space agency’s surprise announcement in April that NASA awarded SpaceX a lunar lander contract worth around $ 2.9 billion. SpaceX competed with Blue Origin and Dynetics for what was to be two contracts, before NASA awarded a single contract due to a lower-than-expected allocation for the Congress program.

Read the full copy of the lawsuit written by Blue Origin below.