Blue Origin continues to cause trouble for NASA. Ever since NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion Artemis Human Landing System (HLS) contract, Blue Origin has been fighting over the aspect. It is a contract that is about developing a Starship that can land astronauts on the moon by 2024. The Opposition, both Blue Origin and Dynetics filed various protests to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) stating that the process opted by NASA was unfair.
The founder of Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos has been losing the case with GAO, as the government body has been dismissing the allegations. In the federal court filing, Blue Origin’s lawyers wrote, “This bid protest challenges NASA’s unlawful and improper evaluation of proposals,”
Interestingly many of Blue Origin’s employees do not prefer taking these steps. It so happened that when Jeff Bezos filled the case, the same day Blue Origin’s HLS Lead Engineer quit the job. It was Nitin Arora who quit working at Blue Origin and instead went to work with SpaceX instead.
NASA: "All of this once-in-a-generation momentum, can easily be undone by one party—in this case, Blue Origin—who seeks to prioritize its own fortunes over that of NASA, the United States, and every person alive today" https://t.co/Pq1kk5xeg1 pic.twitter.com/oXkATXkGCz
— Michael Sheetz (@thesheetztweetz) September 29, 2021