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Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin took its fight against NASA’s Moon program to federal court on Monday. The complaint escalates a months-long crusade led by the company to gain some of the funds for the lunar lander that was only handed over to rival Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The company’s lawsuit, coming weeks after its first protest against the Moon program was crushed by a federal oversight agency, could trigger another procedural break in SpaceX’s contract and add yet another long delay to the race. from NASA to land astronauts on the moon by 2024.
Blue Origin’s complaint, filed with the United States Federal Claims Court, was surrounded by a protective order. The company broadly disputes NASA’s decision to choose SpaceX for the lunar lander award, and “more specifically … challenges NASA’s illegal and inappropriate assessment of the proposals submitted under the HLS A BAA option.” , according to his request to file his complaint under seal. .
Blue Origin was one of three companies vying for a contract to land NASA’s first astronauts on the moon since 1972. In April, NASA shelved the company’s $ 5.9 billion proposal. for its Blue Moon landing system and opted for SpaceX’s $ 2.9 billion spacecraft proposal instead. choose only one company for the project after saying they could choose two. The limited funding from Congress allowed only one contract, NASA argued.
Blue Origin lodged a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) less than two weeks after SpaceX’s price announcement, arguing that NASA should have canceled or changed the terms of the program when it learned it did would not have had enough money to fund two separate contracts. He also alleged that NASA unfairly negotiated the terms of SpaceX’s proposal before awarding the award, without giving the same opportunities to Blue Origin and Dynetics. The GAO rejected these arguments in late July and ruled NASA’s decision fair and legal.
The protest kept SpaceX from starting its contract for 95 days while GAO adjudicated the case. Now in federal claims court, Blue Origin’s latest challenge could trigger another delay. The company alerted the court last week to its impending lawsuit and asked the judge to order a suspension of SpaceX’s contract while the case is judged, according to a person familiar with the opinion who is not. authorized to speak publicly about the dispute. If the judge grants Blue Origin’s request, SpaceX’s contract break could potentially last even longer, putting a major dent in the timeline of NASA’s Artemis program.
After losing its protest against the GAO, Blue Origin has expressed its frustration out in the open through sarcastic statements and white papers dangling the prospect of another legal fight in court and attacking SpaceX’s Starship system as being ineffective. “We remain firmly convinced that there were fundamental problems with the NASA decision,” the company said in a statement after the GAO decision, “but the GAO was unable to resolve them due to of its limited jurisdiction “. In an infographic posted on its website, Blue Origin said “there is an unprecedented number of technologies, developments and operations that have never been done before to make Starship land on the moon.”
Blue Origin showcased its Blue Moon lunar lander with a “national team” of established aerospace entrepreneurs that included Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, signaling that the technical expertise of these companies would fill Blue Origin’s limited spaceflight experience.
SpaceX’s spacecraft is a fully reusable rocket system the company built in South Texas. The spacecraft, as proposed to NASA, would require at least eight launches of an oil version of Starship that would supply fuel to a lunar lander version of Starship before making it to the lunar surface. Blue Origin made this complexity a weakness and a reason why NASA should have chosen a second company.
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