Yesterday, Elon Musk replied to a tweet mentioning NASA’s Blue Origin Rejection. As NASA picked SpaceX, it meant rejection for the other two companies.
Elon’s troll
Basically, the reply was under Blue Origin’s failure. So, the reply was like an answer to the challenge Blue Origin gave to NASA.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2021
As shown in the above tweet, Elon Musk also mentions Blue Origin’s goal. Both Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk are ambitious. No wonder that they both led to a race when it came to space rockets.
Jeff Bezos challenge to NASA
Jeff Bezos filled a 50-page contract challenging NASA. Which is fighting against federal government accountability office.
However, NASA chose SpaceX earlier, as they have already made progress since last year. This meant defeat for the other two competitors. Besides Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, there is Dynetics of Huntsville.
Blue origin gave a statement to Reuters,
“NASA has executed a flawed acquisition for the Human Landing System program. And moved the goalposts at the last minute.”
Further added, “Their decision eliminates opportunities for competition, significantly narrows the supply base, and not only delays. But also endangers America’s return to the moon. Because of that, we’ve filed a protest with the GAO.”
On the other hand, NASA has been silent on the protests. They said they cannot give any comment as this is ongoing litigation.
So far, NASA has done many successful missions. The international space station has been running for decades now. As said by Blue Origin’s Chief Executive, Bob Smith, NASA rarely does any errors. With their protests, they say that the errors needed to be addressed and that they are doing their part.
Two rockets against one
Interestingly, Dynetics also has joined Blue Origin in the protest. As the company said to Space News,
“Dynetics has issues and concerns with several aspects of the acquisition process as well as elements of NASA’s technical evaluation and filed a protest with the GAO to address them. We respect this process and look forward to a fair and informed resolution of the matter.”
Though the issue remains unclear. It is true that NASA earlier hinted that they are going to fund one or more projects. Eventually, this leads to only selecting SpaceX as HLS Acquisition. Though the company isn’t focused on proving they are eligible, they are asking for a clear answer behind the selection.
As per the available details, Dynetics had the lowest rank among the three competitors. Their technical rating was mere marginal. They fight or not, Dynetics may not get the funding.
In 2014, GAO filed a similar protest on NASA, which was later withdrawn by 2015.
