NASA Suspends SpaceX's $2.9 Billion Moon Lander Contract After Rivals Protest (theverge.com) 88
NASA has suspended work on SpaceX's new $2.9 billion lunar lander contract while a federal watchdog agency adjudicates two protests over the award, the agency said Friday. The Verge reports: Putting the Human Landing System (or HLS) work on hold until the GAO makes a decision on the two protests means SpaceX won't immediately receive its first chunk of the $2.9 billion award, nor will it commence the initial talks with NASA that would normally take place at the onset of a major contract. Elon Musk's SpaceX was picked by NASA on April 16th to build the agency's first human lunar lander since the Apollo program, as the agency opted to rely on just one company for a high-profile contract that many in the space industry expected to go to two companies.
As a result, two companies that were in the running for the contract, Blue Origin and Dynetics, protested NASA's decision to the Government Accountability Office, which adjudicates bidding disputes. Blue Origin alleges the agency unfairly "moved the goalposts at the last minute" and endangered NASA's speedy 2024 timeline by only picking SpaceX. "Pursuant to the GAO protests, NASA instructed SpaceX that progress on the HLS contract has been suspended until GAO resolves all outstanding litigation related to this procurement," NASA spokeswoman Monica Witt said in a statement.
As a result, two companies that were in the running for the contract, Blue Origin and Dynetics, protested NASA's decision to the Government Accountability Office, which adjudicates bidding disputes. Blue Origin alleges the agency unfairly "moved the goalposts at the last minute" and endangered NASA's speedy 2024 timeline by only picking SpaceX. "Pursuant to the GAO protests, NASA instructed SpaceX that progress on the HLS contract has been suspended until GAO resolves all outstanding litigation related to this procurement," NASA spokeswoman Monica Witt said in a statement.
All this really means (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that the Lunar Starship won't have a NASA meatball on it when it lands on the moon. That's it. Bezos has accomplished less than nothing; he's held others back to the level of his own failure.
What a shmuck.
Re: All this really means (Score:2)
Re: All this really means (Score:1)
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Lets put it this way. Who do you give your money for transportation.
A) A company that has a proven track record of successful transports
B) A company that is prototyping something, but has never actually succeeded
Re:All this really means (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed. Someday, Jeff Bezo's page in the Encyclopedia Galactica will remember him as a pothole on the road to the stars.
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Jeff who?
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He is the 'other guy' who isn't your personal hero.
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No. He is "The Other Guy" who talked about moving all industry into space but couldn't achieve orbit in over 20 years while going from one of the richest men in the world to THE richest man in the world. Then complained about not getting NASA contracts. That is why he is "Jeff Who?"
The guy he "competes with" went from gambling everything on his space company to being the leading private company in space. His company has a partially reusable space craft in use with manned orbital capability and is worki
The Moon isn't on SpaceX path to Mars. (Score:3)
So, without NASA's plans to land on the Moon, SpaceX won't go to the Moon. They will continue with Starship development, for orbital launches and Martian travel, but anything specifically for the Moon - like high thrust hot gas thrusters for a Lunar landing and the specific lunar starship without
Re:The Moon isn't on SpaceX path to Mars. (Score:4, Informative)
And LEO is closer to the Moon than to the Earth, when you look at energy/fuel required to get there....
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If you just want Raptor fuel for Mars missions, moon is not that helpful becuse of that lack of carbon. And if you have to drag a carboneacous asteroid into lunar orbit make CH4, then why not drag one with ice in it into Earth orbit and make the methane in Earth orbit?
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If you lift the carbon from Earth, and get the oxygen and hydrogen from the Moon, you come out way ahead on the whole "fly to Mars" thing.
And if you're using hydrogen and oxygen for fuel, you can get it all from the Moon.
Either way, it's going to be, in the long run, a lot cheaper to get to Mars if you're not lifting anything more than you absolutely have to out of Earth's gravity well....
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This would require them to invent a method of extracting and refining that fuel on the Moon. If you look at time, effort, and cost of doing this, it would be insane to even think about starting this sort of project until you're running weekly service to Mars at a hefty profit. It would be like the Wright brothers building the Dubai airport in 1905 - Eventually it would make sense, but it's not even close to the right time to do it, and is a tremendous waste in every way to do so.
The ISS cost over $150 billi
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"And LEO is closer to the Moon than to the Earth, when you look at energy/fuel required to get there...."
Only if you ignore the energy/propellant required to stop there. It takes about as much to brake into low lunar orbit as it does to go to Mars, where you can use the atmosphere for braking and only need enough propellant for a short landing burn.
And of course, lunar propellant requires a massive lunar propellant mining/processing facility, as opposed to just sending up a tanker from Earth. Lunar propella
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What Bezos wants is to land a robot on the moon that will carve out a huge... no make that really huge Amazon Logo on the surface. As long as it is visible without a telescope, he'll be happy, very happy.
Welcome to planet Amazon people. Your Bezos overlord is coming to indoctrinate you into the cult.
The rival cult of Musk will not be happy.
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What Bezos wants is to land a robot on the moon that will carve out a huge... no make that really huge Amazon Logo on the surface.
If that is what he is trying he needs to read his Heinlien.
Re: All this really means (Score:3)
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In this case, it's more, "I'm taking *his* ball and going home' . . .
the problem with this appeals is that they delay projects by years, not weeks.
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Is that the Lunar Starship won't have a NASA meatball on it when it lands on the moon.
Musk could plant his flag and declare the moon Muskville; and let the lawyers fight it out over international treaties while he builds Musktown.
So much for that idea, Wilville.... (Score:2)
Well, 2024 looked iffy, at the best of times. The litigation will take long enough that 2024 is, as we used to say Right Out.
And by the time the various branches of government sort this out, we'll be well past 2024 (if it works like most legal wrangling, we won't see a Lunar landing again in my lifetime.
Unless the Chinese can manage one....
Re:So much for that idea, Wilville.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So much for that idea, Wilville.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Now they may have to split the $2.3 billion three ways .. meaning nobody will have enough money to get it done. Think about it, an modern airplane takes about $10 billion in investment to development .. and that's known technology. This spacecraft has to be just as safe and well tested. $2.3 billion isn't even a lot of money in that context.
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It doesn't have to be "just as safe". Crew Dragon had an estimated probability of failure of of 1/276. (versus the Space shuttle probability of failure of 1/68). Both of those numbers are nowhere near as safe as an airliner.
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No, when the government violates the rights of contract bidders, those parties are not obligated to protect the government from the consequences of seeking justice.
Nor are their attempts to achieve justice required to actually mean justice for the government; they're allowed to seek justice for themselves.
NASA's selection of SpaceX makes 2024 possible. (Score:5, Insightful)
SpaceX is moving fast, and I'd back them to at least get their part of it ready for flight within 3 years. Whether Boeing can have the SLS stack ready by then, or LockMart and Airbus can have an Orion Spacecraft is less certain. But even then, you can tweak the Starship system to do the mission without SLS.
B.O. and Dynetics argument seems to be that NASA could have broken up the payment between the three companies, essentially paying 2/3 of the money for systems that won't be used, shredding funding for whatever system might end up being used, and pushing the launch date out indefinitely.
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I do not want a single 'brand' to be the only entity the government can go to. Particularly if it's a 'brand' that mostly has just been savvy in slurping up government incentives and subidies in one of their other pursuits.
Government stuff is supposed to be deliberative. The hustle-hustle attitude like a 2024 deadline is not the way government should be run.
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Selling a good or service to the government at a significantly reduced cost than they would be able to buy it from anyone else is the exact opposite of a subsidy. SpaceX is saving NASA money when NASA pays them for a launch. Are you seriously arguing NASA should pay more for launches because you don't like the one guy heading the company who can deliver for cheap? Anyone else is welcome to match prices, but until they do, NASA gets the best value for their money with SpaceX. It's not a difficult formula -
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The hustle-hustle attitude like a 2024 deadline is not the way government should be run.
I seem to recall a President setting a deadline like this before and the US met the challenge. It went like this [wikipedia.org]:
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.
The US landed on the Moon 7 years later.
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I seem to recall a President setting a deadline like this before and the US met the challenge. It went like this [wikipedia.org]:
I remember another President who wanted to go to the moon in 4 years because he wanted to ensure it was done while HE was in office, when that was impossible he was much less interested in it even when it MIGHT be done at the very end of his hypothetical 2nd term (which he didn't get).
Other Presidents started their terms by cancelling the prior Presidents space plans then ended their own with big plans which of course their successor cancelled.
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More competition would definitely be nice, but it has to actually be competitive. The other potential providers for this contract wanted double to triple what SpaceX is willing to do it for while providing far less capable craft. And this after SpaceX received 2/4 times LESS than what the others received in the initial development stage (BO: $579M, D: $253M, SX: $135M). It would seem to me that NASA already threw BO and Dynetics a line to the tune of over $800m,and the only thing they got for it were ske
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The litigation will take long enough that 2024 is, as we used to say Right Out.
Pedantic nitpick: Although the summary describes the dispute as "litigation", it is actually an administrative review run by bureaucrats, not judges.
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I was thinking more in terms of "if we lose, we sue" (all parties involved).
And both BO and Dynetics want this to take a long time. Because that gives them more time to actually develop something that looks vaguely like a Lunar Lander.
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I just don't understand the attitude that 2024 is a do or die deadline. Is there some big problem with the idea of there being more than one viable lunar lander desigh?
Perhaps no government money should go to any of them if it means only one design will be completed.
However, we know how badly Musk will do in any endeavor without money from the government.
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The likelihood of a NASA hardware development program being canceled, delayed, or the mission success criteria changed dramatically increases radically with each new administration. If they don't get it substantially done by 2024 then "it" will likely be cancelled or changed so significantly as to make it unrecognizable.
It's okay. The Russians sold us rides to ISS for a decade. Maybe we can hitch a lift to the moon too.
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It is an incredible waste of time and money designing two when you will only use one. This would be like Boeing designing two complete separate new aircraft when they know they will only produce one, or a car manufacturer doing something similar. Why? What possible benefit would justify doubling the development costs when it produces the same end result?
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I was thinking more in terms of "if we lose, we sue" (all parties involved).
And both BO and Dynetics want this to take a long time. Because that gives them more time to actually develop something that looks vaguely like a Lunar Lander.
Not really. Neither wants to spend their own money that has no guarantee of being paid back (with profit) by the government. They might spend some money rewriting the design proposal but not on solid design work or prototype building.
SpaceX work on Starship is part of other goals and only incidentally works for Lunar Starship. They won't likely do any work that is only for Lunar Starship until they have the contract but will continue other Starship work that will also be needed for the Lunar Starship.
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That's a False Pedanticism, the phrasing merely implies that they've received notice that parties have indicated that they will sue if their rights are not restored, and requested documents be retained. So there is litigation at issue, even if no lawsuits have yet been filed.
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What about me? (Score:5, Funny)
I have gotten just as many things into orbit as Blue Origin, whereâ(TM)s my slice of the pie?
Re: Use Companies that Reject Affirmative Action (Score:2)
Dafuq you smoking man, Zhao speaks for PARTY, that is all he speaks for.
Knowledge, once obtained will not be constrained, ask the Indians, and Middle Eastern people how they managed to get spacecraft into LEO and now also to Mars.
You have a myopic view of who has the appropriate technology, it may not be as robust as what the US has, but it will still get the job done, and with their own engineers and mathematicians.
Re:Use Companies that Reject Affirmative Action (Score:5, Funny)
Man, AC suggests you should watch Bill O-fucking-Reilly, as if he is some relevant truth speaker and not a disgraced hack with 0 good ideas is pretty fucking hilarious in mid-2021.
When did conservatives become such sensitive snowflakes about everything?
Should I make you a safe space where the scary ethnicities can't get to you?
The 2024 goal was ridiculous (Score:1)
Even when JFK announced the US was going to the moon, the timeline was a decade and he knew he would be out of office if the goal was met. And that was when there was effectively an unlimited budget. Given how science budgets are limited these days, achieving a moon
Re: The 2024 goal was ridiculous (Score:2)
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There's no presidency where he's going. It's more of a... feudal arrangement. [wikipedia.org]
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Even when JFK announced the US was going to the moon, the timeline was a decade and he knew he would be out of office if the goal was met. And that was when there was effectively an unlimited budget.
The U.S. spent close to $35 billion on NASA in the 1960s and $168 billion on the Vietnam war. Which admittedly ran until 1973 but shows where the number one priority was. Might also indicate why the space program was curtailed in the 1970s. That $168B in today's money would be $1 trillion, less than half the cost of the war in Afghanistan. You could have already gone to Mars and had a chain of Howard Johnson's up there by now.
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Even when JFK announced the US was going to the moon, the timeline was a decade and he knew he would be out of office if the goal was met. And that was when there was effectively an unlimited budget.
The U.S. spent close to $35 billion on NASA in the 1960s and $168 billion on the Vietnam war. Which admittedly ran until 1973 but shows where the number one priority was. Might also indicate why the space program was curtailed in the 1970s. That $168B in today's money would be $1 trillion, less than half the cost of the war in Afghanistan. You could have already gone to Mars and had a chain of Howard Johnson's up there by now.
Yea, but war is more profitable.
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The only reason for picking 2024 was that Trump wanted to be President when the US returned humans to the moon.
Putting aside the motives (about which you are correct), this program is actually moving forward. Possibly due to how hard Trump pushed it, it has enough momentum to not immediately die after the next Administration took office, and that's not nothing.
Blue Origin has done nothing (Score:1)
And now they will force others to do nothing too
I'm calling my congressman (Score:2)
you should too
Re:Thanks Jeff Bezos, BO is worse than useless (Score:4, Interesting)
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No surprise here, that’s how he built Amazon; hire obedient, conformist, staff, who’ll follow your 14 principals and tell them to build things as cheaply as possible without rocking the boat. Then sell then half-assed resulting product to others as a *cheaper* but good enough alternative.
That works fine for AWS, which is half-baked compared to GCP or Azure. However, that’s an OK strategy for that use case, it doesn’t have to be the best to win that competition, it just needs to be go
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You are personally worth $200 billion. Why are you trying so hard to wreck a $2.9 billion lunar landing contract?
Rich people don't like to pay for things -- that how they get/stay rich.
Is a Democracy really truly better? (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, so we've seen (and China will never let us forget) how poorly the U.S. and Western democracies performed under the pandemic. With a death toll passing 600,000 and infections in the millions it is clear that some of the virtues of democracies, like no (or low) levels of censorship and tribal politics led to people believing stupid conspiracy theories. This directly led to people not adhering to the simplest and most basic health practices (why is wearing a mask worse than a seat belt? It's actually
Re:Is a Democracy really truly better? (Score:4, Insightful)
The best argument against democracy is a quick scan through social media such as Facebook or Twitter. In order to drive a car, you need to pass some basic applicable skills and knowledge test, in order to drive a country (by voting) there are no such competency tests. Even the elected officials have no competency prerequisites, so we end up with ones who win popularity contests regardless of their qualifications to do the job.
And the qualifications for the alternative? (Score:5, Insightful)
The best argument against democracy is a quick scan through social media such as Facebook or Twitter. In order to drive a car, you need to pass some basic applicable skills and knowledge test, in order to drive a country (by voting) there are no such competency tests. Even the elected officials have no competency prerequisites, so we end up with ones who win popularity contests regardless of their qualifications to do the job.
I'm guessing that the voter "qualifications" you're looking is that they have the same background as you and think like you.
In the other systems the "elected leaders" simply demonstrate a willingness to trample over everyone else, regardless of the cost including taking away the "qualified" electorate's right to vote.
Seeing your comment reminds me of the Churchill quote:
No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
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I know what you're thinking - a danger of political indoctrination through "voter training". That definitely should be kept in mind, but no, that is not what I meant. I meant basic training for voters, facts (not opinions) how the political system works so that nobody is puzzled by electoral vote system and such. Some basic history too, akin to citizenship tests given to new potential citizens. Perhaps some basic logic and critical thinking, along the lines of, e.g. "If A then B" doesn't mean if "B then A"
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That's why I support mandatory voting.
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In that case, you would fit right in in the old Soviet Union or North Korea. All totalitarian regimes have mandatory voting. What they don't have is a choice in WHO to vote for.
You would also fit in quite well in Australia, which (to reference the OP) has done quite well in the pandemic thank you, has mandatory voting, and is a democracy. I think that Australia's example blows up the arguments of every post in this thread.
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The axis is Authoritarian vs. Libertarian. The first is "the ends justify the means". Mao murdered 50-million Chinese "for the common good". The latter is "the means justify the ends". Liberty is supposed to be "better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man is wrongly accused."
In Freedom, outcomes are not guaranteed. "It's a dangerous way of life, but it is ours."
Democracy, though, leads to people clamoring for safety and handouts, which is why all the great thinkers for millenia have dispar
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Wish I had mod points; satirical but deep since it’s laced with a vein of truth, all in 3 short sentences. Well played!
How about winner take all? (Score:2)
Maybe they could make it a competition instead - whichever company builds a working lander first and passes NASA's tests (perhaps lands a few of NASA's crush test dummies on the moon and brings them back safely), wins the whole $2.9bn. Both Musk and Bezos have plenty of net worth to finance such a project. The losing company still ends up with valuable technology they can sell to other interested parties.
Charge Protestors For Increased Cost? (Score:2)
So will the additional costs incurred by the delay in work caused by this 'protest' be paid for the companies that launched the grievance?
Or will they be the ones chanting 'See! It cost more than they (SpaceX) said it would' years down the road?
Also, will the investigator simply ask Bezos if Amazon would pick an unproven contractor over a proven one? Yeah, not for one instant. Never has, never will.
Hopefully only a short term delay (Score:2)
I'm not sure what Blue Origin/Dynetics hope to accomplish with this (besides publicity). Both of their designs were way more expensive than the SpaceX option, far less capable and far more than NASA could currently afford regardless. NASA's options appear to have been either chose SpaceX, choose no one or chose 2 (maybe even 3) contracts and run the very real risk of not having enough money to do anything. NASA appears to have gone with the more pragmatic approach, chose the ONLY one they could afford an
Northrop Grumman should be selected (Score:2)
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Er...NGSS doesn't have any heavy lift experience. The closest they get is that Northop Grumman bought the company (a few mergers removed) that made the Shuttle boosters. They're making the SLS boosters as well, but the core that does most of the work is Boeing's. For a while they worked on a Shuttle-derived medium-heavy vehicle, but gave up on it when the USAF decided not to use it.
ULA and SpaceX are the only US companies with currently operational HLVs (SpaceX having the only operational superheavy launch
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missile as well as commercial and military satellite launch over decades;
Cannot use experience from past decades. Tom Kelly and his team at Grumman, others at North American, etc. they're all dead or longtime retired and much of that infrastructure was dismantled. When looking at heavy lift, we need to see who can do what now or soon. Next question is sustainability as that is important. We don't want to follow the Apollo program model (it worked great for task back then).
Business as usual for federal procurement (Score:1)
This is not a surprise at all. Every major federal contract is challenged by the losers either in hopes the winner will pay them off, possibly with a sub-contract, or that the government will re-open the process. Most of the time, the losers get a chunk of the business or direct payment to keep quiet. When a contract is worth billions, a few million for lawyers is a good investment.
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Because The Jeff does not lose, he is all knowing, all hail The Jeff. Seriously, Bezos knows how to build subservient teams, not creative teams. That’s why BO is going nowhere. Even a non-tech guy like Branson is closer to getting to space with Galactic than Bezos is because Branson encourages creativity.
Another government screw-up (Score:1)