Blue Origin 'Gambled' With Its Moon Lander Pricing, NASA Says in Legal Documents (theverge.com) 92
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin "gambled" with its Moon lander proposal last year by hoping NASA would be willing to negotiate its $5.9 billion price tag, agency attorneys argued in blunt legal filings obtained by The Verge. From a report: NASA, cash-strapped with a tight budget from Congress, declined to negotiate and turned down Blue Origin's lunar lander in April and picked SpaceX's instead, sparking ongoing protests from Bezos' space company. NASA officials haven't talked much about Blue Origin's legal quarrels beyond occasional acknowledgements that the company's protesting -- first at a watchdog agency and now in federal court -- is holding up the agency's effort to land humans on the Moon by 2024.
But in hundreds of pages of legal filings The Verge obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request, agency attorneys exhaustively laid out NASA's defense of its Artemis Moon program and doubled down on its decision to pick one company, SpaceX, for the first crewed mission to the lunar surface since 1972. In NASA's main response to Blue Origin's protest, filed in late May, senior agency attorneys accused the company of employing a sort of door-in-the-face bidding tactic with its $5.9 billion proposal for Blue Moon, the lunar lander Blue Origin is building with a "National Team" that includes Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Blue Origin was "able and willing" to offer NASA a lower price for its lunar lander but chose not to because it expected NASA to ask and negotiate for a lower price first, the attorneys allege, citing a six-page declaration written by the company's senior vice president Brent Sherwood in April.
But in hundreds of pages of legal filings The Verge obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request, agency attorneys exhaustively laid out NASA's defense of its Artemis Moon program and doubled down on its decision to pick one company, SpaceX, for the first crewed mission to the lunar surface since 1972. In NASA's main response to Blue Origin's protest, filed in late May, senior agency attorneys accused the company of employing a sort of door-in-the-face bidding tactic with its $5.9 billion proposal for Blue Moon, the lunar lander Blue Origin is building with a "National Team" that includes Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Blue Origin was "able and willing" to offer NASA a lower price for its lunar lander but chose not to because it expected NASA to ask and negotiate for a lower price first, the attorneys allege, citing a six-page declaration written by the company's senior vice president Brent Sherwood in April.
Jeff Bezos lost (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Jeff Bezos lost (Score:5, Interesting)
I've written and won government contracts, and even small ones have numerous requirements. Among them is typically not merely the price tag, but a justification for the price tag. You have to actually demonstrate that there is some meaningful chance of fulfilling the requirements for the amount of money you say you can. And I've seen people bid on contracts for a low sticker price, clearly with the idea that once they're a third of the way along and running out of cash, they can just go back and say "Hey, y'know, we need to up this budget", and a government agency will view what they've paid out already as sunk cost. And you know, it often works. All too often. I was actually a meeting with the government agency and all the contractors, where one contractor that had clearly underbid another company (whose CEO had been an acquaintance and good guy) had lost out, and here this company was, demanding that the government bump up the milestone payments. In this case, the government rep simply said "This was an open procurement, you're locked into the contract you signed, and for us to review it would be both unethical, and almost certainly illegal."
In this case, Bezos isn't anywhere near where SpaceX has gone. It's barely more than a bloody startup at this point. Bezos can go scam some money out of someone other than NASA.
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And I've seen people bid on contracts for a low sticker price, clearly with the idea that once they're a third of the way along and running out of cash, they can just go back and say "Hey, y'know, we need to up this budget", and a government agency will view what they've paid out already as sunk cost
This is a playbook commonly used by NASA et al, to get money from congress. Just look at the JWST.
Re:Jeff Bezos lost (Score:5, Informative)
Not really, JWST is more similar to the situation with the Space Shuttle. They said, "We need $X." Congress said, "You get $A minus $B". They start the project and say "We need $B now, like we told you before" and Congress replies "You get $BY minus $C". Wash, rinse, repeat. The joy of an engineering program being run by lawyers and accountants.
Re:Jeff Bezos lost (Score:5, Insightful)
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Tell us more, did your neighbour take up the offer or did he decline. What happened next. Don't leave us in suspense!
Jet ski as public transportation? (Score:2)
I had no idea that "jet ski rental service" is an obligate, regulated monopoly service at the county level anywhere. Is there a place on Earth where jet skis count as public transportation?
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In this case, county was either idiotic or corrupt. Idiotic in that
Re:Jeff Bezos lost (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Jeff Bezos lost (Score:5, Interesting)
They do. It's called "failure to meet the milestone", in which case the contractor does not get paid, and the government can walk away with whatever they've already paid for in previous milestones. That's where the teeth are, and they are real teeth.
However, what GP is describing is what sometimes happens:
That means the government decides that they are too far along to quit now, and so they decide to throw even more money into the job anyway. It can happen. In that case the contractor can rake in more money than they originally bid. OTOH, the government will take a really very harsh look at the terms of any ongoing work, and will demand a much lower rate for the ongoing work. So the future work is not as profitable, but the contractor gets to keep going, at least for a while. But their reputation will be shit from then on.
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This makes me think government contracts should have teeth to handle failing to meet budget and schedule bids.
Yes. because the government is so good at getting things done on time and within budget.
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In this case, Bezos isn't anywhere near where SpaceX has gone. It's barely more than a bloody startup at this point. Bezos can go scam some money out of someone other than NASA.
This. I'm happy to throw turds at Spacex when the deserve it, but they have the proven ability to do something like this. Blue Origin hasn't even put a rocket into orbit yet. Spacex does regularly, and has started placing humans onto the space station and returned them.
I support Blue Origin's work, but they are no where near ready for primetime yet.
Moon is suborbital (Score:4, Interesting)
SpaceX does not need the lunar contract as they already have working orbital rockets. They no longer need the support of NASA contracts to develop
Arguments can be made either way but to me it seems SpaceX is trying to bid on everything available so as to suck up all space dollars so that competitors have no funding to develop with.
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Given the Moon has 1/6th the gravity the lunar lander doesnt need to be very strong. It is actually an ideal contract for a company trying to scale from sub-orbital to orbital.
SpaceX does not need the lunar contract as they already have working orbital rockets. They no longer need the support of NASA contracts to develop
I know that if I had to build and deploy and land on the moon and come back alive, I would be inclined to use a company that had experience.
Would you hop on board a moon lander built by a company that never was in orbit? How about the people you love most in the world?
Blue Origin can continue to press toward getting into space - real space, like people launching to orbit, orbiting and successfully landing. Then they can bid on other projects with a good chance of winning. Or maybe he could bail the whol
Re:Moon is suborbital (Score:5, Interesting)
>Would you hop on board a moon lander built by a company that never was in orbit?
Depends how many times they had successfully flown a flight similar to the one I actually want to make.
At present, SpaceX is the obvious choice - cheaper, more well-developed hardware, and 80% of the development is happening independently from NASA's specialized version, and could do the job in a pinch. And the basic rocket is likely to have *lots* of unmanned flights under its belt before the Lunar version ever leaves the ground.
But down the line there's (hopefully) going to be a lot of demand for more specialized vehicles - like *efficient* lunar surface-to-orbit transportation. You don't necessarily want to land a space station on the moon for every supply run or survey mission. And most of those specialties have very little in common with the demands of getting off Earth's surface.
I really love that Dynetics ALPACA is getting continued funding as well (under schedule N?), separately from the HLS program, as a vehicle NASA actually sees long-term potential with. I think basically funding to keep refining the design and bring the weight down and hopefully improve the reusability. Because really, a low-slung "sky-crane" capable of delivering a small RV sized payload to the moon's surface and back to orbit using a fraction of the fuel of a Starship landing has *enormous* potential.
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I really love that Dynetics ALPACA is getting continued funding as well (under schedule N?), separately from the HLS program, as a vehicle NASA actually sees long-term potential with. I think basically funding to keep refining the design and bring the weight down and hopefully improve the reusability. Because really, a low-slung "sky-crane" capable of delivering a small RV sized payload to the moon's surface and back to orbit using a fraction of the fuel of a Starship landing has *enormous* potential.
I've been rooting for Astra as well. They had a really weird failure on a launch recently - a sideways launch. One of the engines failed immediately at launch. Impressive that the guidance system managed to keep the rocket upright and moving. Even though doomed, not being able to reach orbital velocity, they flew it up to a point where it could be destroyed and debris would land in the water instead of the launchpad.
But the guidance system gets 5 stars.
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Astra is not one I've paid much attention to. Are they doing anything interesting? Is their guidance actually something special?
For my money a space company needs to satisfy at least one of the following criteria to be worth paying attention to:
- Are they aiming for full reusability in the near term? If not, there's no way they'll compete with Starship.
- Are they developing any sort of niche technology that may become more relevant in the future? For example I think it's Relativity Space that's fully 3D
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Astra is not one I've paid much attention to. Are they doing anything interesting? Is their guidance actually something special?
They are really doing it differently. The big thing is they are launching from Alaska. The launches definitely look different, launching with mountains and cliffs in the background.
Launching at that latitude looks like we're talking about polar orbits which mostly are about military uses, but if they can do relatively inexpensive polar orbit launches, I'll bet there will be a lot of things thought up to send to polar orbit. I can think of some geomagnetic work offhand. I've attached the video of the launc
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>What we have with rockets is that there isn't a one size fits all. Starship will be too big for many payloads
I'm not so sure that's true. Bigger is more efficient, and reusable is *vastly* cheaper. Starship is planned to eventually reduce the cost to orbit to tens of dollars per kg rather than thousands. And is projected to be cheaper per-launch than a Falcon 9 almost immediately - Musk himself has said that once Starship is past its growing-pains there will no longer be any financial reason to ever
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Would you hop on board a moon lander built by a company that never was in orbit?
The Apollo Lunar Module was built by Grumman [wikipedia.org], a company that had, until that point, built nothing but regular aircraft.
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Would you hop on board a moon lander built by a company that never was in orbit?
The Apollo Lunar Module was built by Grumman [wikipedia.org], a company that had, until that point, built nothing but regular aircraft.
It would be difficult to find the company that did the moon lander before Apollo. 8^)
Today though, we're dealing with companies with experience, and companies with very little experience.
I like that there are other companies in competition with Spacex. In fact, Spacex worries me as they have pre Challenger type hubris these days. And that isn't good. I'd prefer to have Spacex have some good competition to calm that hubris down.
But Blue origin just isn't ready yet. Bezos might have pushed one of hi
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Personally I think companies should have future government contract bids "handicapped" by previous egregious behavior. If you underbid a contract and come back for X dollars more, your next bid consideration is increased for deliberation by X plus 10% of the current bid amount. If you filed an unsuccessful lawsuit, your next bid is increased by the cost of the lawsuit plus an additional 10% of the current bid. If you fail to complete a prior contract, future bids would be handicapped by 100% of the past failed contract. Contracts would be awarded on basis of their actual bid amounts but considered on the handicapped amount. Handicaps would roll off after ten years to give companies a chance for redemption.
Not a bad idea. There might need to be provisions for really unexpected circumstances. But those circumstances would be known as an unforseen thing, so if a group underbids just to get the job, punishment would indeed be in order.
Re:Moon is suborbital (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, but you still need to get the lander off the surface of the Earth and deliver it to the Moon. (Until we have the capability to do aerospace manufacturing on the Moon using lunar resources.) For that, you need at least orbital capability (deliver components to LEO, assemble in place, then go). Or, even better, achieve escape velocity. (OK, trans-lunar injection isn't escape velocity, but it's pretty close.) SpaceX has done both, and is very publicly making progress on new hardware to expand their capabilities. Blue Origin has done neither, and is showing little progress to even getting into orbit.
Unlike the previous round of Artemis funding, which was seed money to multiple companies for developing projects (Blue Origin got the largest share of that, by the way), NASA didn't award the latest contract just to float programs along. NASA is awarding a contract for a deliverable; SpaceX (probably) will deliver. SpaceX probably wouldn't build a lunar version of Starship if NASA wasn't buying.
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Its like you put out a RFP for installing a new Bathtub and SpaceX bid with hey for the same price we will give you an RV with a bathtub in it and the Bathtub will come preinstalled and the RV will deliver itself, no delivery truck needed.
The guys trying to sell a bathtub are protesting the award as thats not what the original contract was but NASA is happy gettin
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Neither does Bezos.
You bid on things to get contracts to make money. That's how it's supposed to work. Bezos thinks he's due. Not how it's supposed to work.
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Jeff ruins everything and gets bitter fast. Don't forget the JEDI contract, they ruined that also.
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Well, JEDI deserved to get ruined. AWS had all the capabilities the Pentagon needed, Azure needed to create them. AWS had all the necessary certifications, Azure was "granted" them on a temporary basis just to allow the bid. AWS had all the infrastructure necessary already in place, Azure needed to build it out. AWS had the trained personnel to handle the work loads, Azure was going to have to hire and train them. AWS has the Snowmobile to move the exabytes of data lakes they have, Azure thought you ca
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I've been disappointed with his management of the Post, it's still run by essentially the same hacks as before in essentially the same way.
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Re:Jeff Bezos lost (Score:4, Interesting)
I was really hoping that Bezos would bring back investigative reporting of the type that Jack Anderson used to do, maybe hire Greg Palast and the other few scattered investigative reporters that there are left in the world.. Make the Washington Post a newspaper that the country could be proud of having again, with a 'free press' rather than just more 'corporate media'. Apparently it's not to be.
Re:Jeff Bezos lost (Score:4, Insightful)
But it is not an overstatement to say that all of the successes upon which the Option A procurement is built, 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 who dreams to see humans exploring worlds beyond our own. Plainly stated, a protest sustain in the instant dispute runs the high risk of creating not just delays for the Artemis program, but that it will never actually achieve its goal of returning the United States to the Moon. What begins as a mere procurement delay all too easily turns into a lack of political support, a budget siphoned off for other efforts, and ultimately, a shelved mission. begins as a mere procurement delay all too easily turns into a lack of political support, a budget siphoned off for other efforts, and ultimately, a shelved mission. GAO should, of course, sustain one or more of Blue Origin's grounds of protest if they find them to be availing. But NASA merely wishes to impress upon this office just how high the stakes are in the present dispute.
Pretty bold language from NASA.
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Bezos has treated Blue Origin as a spare time hobby for years, tossing money at it but not really devoting a whole lot of time or attention. Now that Jassey is CEO of Amazon he's supposedly going to take a more active role, I suspect the flood of executives who are "retiring" recently are doing so as part of an epic ass-kicking marathon that I'd expect to see. He's not patient with thumb twiddlers.
Re:Jeff Bezos lost (Score:5, Interesting)
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And who knows when he loses this appeal, his lead counsel might be the first guy to make it to LEO without the aid of a space suit - or a rocket
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well, if he throws his lawyers at NASA fast enough, he may be able to reach escape velocity
Not How Bid Contracts Work (Score:2)
I'm somewhat surprised that Bezos and co don't know how competitive bidding for contracts work.
Then again, he might have thought he had an effective monopoly like he does with Amazon.
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Bezos thinks his work with the CIA and Palantir give him more juice than Musk can muster. He thinks he's got enough clout in national security circles, and maybe enough dirt, that he can dictate terms. He's probably leaning hard on every politician he has kompromat on.
Re:Not How Bid Contracts Work (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that he has no clout with NASA, while SpaceX has a decades-long history of working with NASA, including actual experience flying NASA astronauts. I have to imagine that "We've launched NASA astronauts into orbit multiple times and want to build a lunar lander" has to carry *some* weight compared to "We've never launched anything in orbit after 20+ years of work and probably won't for a few years yet".
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But NASA is funded and controlled by congress. The law suit is just to provide cover, the real fight is going on behind closed doors. If he has enough dirt on enough congresscritters, they will ensure he gets his way.
I mean, I hope to hell Bezos doesn't win but given how corrupt Washington is, there's every chance the scumbag will win.
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"Can't Get It up?" - Elon Musk to Bezos
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I don't think Bezos cares what us peons think. But I know it galls him that Elon has one-upped him. And that makes me happy.
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Bezos was partnered with NGC, who is used to bilking the government for decades on their platforms to the point where almost all of the knowledge and skills reside only with the contractor, so the government cannot appropriately audit their proposals other than to compare them with past NGC proposals.
NGC has never lost a major B-2, E-2, F-35, F-18, etc. etc. contract. They "own" the platforms so no one else can compete (and most often aren't allowed to try).
Of course they told Bezos to shoot for the moon, b
Oh, he knows (Score:3)
I'm somewhat surprised that Bezos and co don't know how competitive bidding for contracts work.
Bezos knows quite well. He's seen defense and space contractors win on low bids, and then tell DOD/NASA "Hey, if you don't give us more money, the project dies. Unforeseen circumstances. Sorry".
When's the last time you've seen a military or space contract killed because it went over budget? It happens, but it's damned rare. And the bigger the project is, the harder it is to kill. Even services contracts, where the government could drop the vendor and get another, often survive these bidding games of chicken
He went the other way (Score:3, Informative)
When's the last time you've seen a military or space contract killed because it went over budget?
Read the summary again, he lost not because he bid too low but because he bid way higher than it was going to cost to build.
Indeed as you say, he should have simply lowballed it and came back for more money later...
Of course, maybe the Blue Origin number WAS a lowball and it would have cost even more to build. But the legal documents say BO thought they could build it for less, but set a very high initial offer
Re: He went the other way (Score:2)
I have a solution! (Score:2)
Sounds like Somebody "Knows how game is played" (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen a number of bids like this where one party comes in with a much higher bid with the expectation that they can be "negotiated" down, especially after pleading their case over an expensive dinner or a trip on a corporate jet to show off facilities/capabilities. The expectation is that they will win but get more money than if they had followed the rules of the bidding process.
It really comes down to somebody thinking they're smarter than everybody else in the room and that they understand the "actual rules".
Sometimes it works out for these people but just as often it doesn't - this sounds like one of those cases.
Re:Sounds like Somebody "Knows how game is played" (Score:5, Insightful)
In some sense I am thankful I the sums involved were small enough for me to take that stand. Wondering how I would have fared if the stakes were larger.
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Re: Sounds like Somebody "Knows how game is played (Score:2)
In other news (Score:2)
is holding up the agency's effort to land humans on the Moon by 2024.
Politicians gambled with the 2024 moon landing proposal, hoping it would win them votes even if they didn't reach the goal.
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The 2024 moon landing proposal? What about the 2020 moon landing proposal, and 2016, and 2012, and 2008, and 2004, and 2000? I swear every four years, like clockwork, a president announces we're going to land on the moon in the next 4-8 years.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference is the 2024 mission is funded, on schedule, and managed by people with a successful track record.
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Is it on schedule?
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Yeah, but now we have spacex and hopefully will throw out SLS which is a big waste of money. Commercial space programs are way better.
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Space X's commercial space program is better, but it's the only one so far. There is a long and messy trail of failed launch companies dating back to OTRAG, a couple that were not complete financial/technical disasters, and Space X. That's it. There are a couple of new players on the horizon who might actually give them some competition, but the jury is still out on them.
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At this point (Score:2)
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How's he holding us back?
He's a nuisance to NASA, and costing a bit with lawsuits. I doubt SpaceX really cares - they've got lots of Starship work to do before working on the Lunar variant would be anything but a distraction and needless division of resources.
Always a Gamble? (Score:2)
Isn't a competitive bidding process always a gamble on the part of the bidders? Bid too high and you risk not getting the contract. Bid too low you risk being unable to make money on it (or even fulfill it at all) for the amount you bid.
To be fair ... (Score:5, Funny)
That $5.9B price did include Ring door bells/cameras on the hatches, in-cabin Alexa, an Astro robot, and Prime streaming to the lander ...
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I think you get standard 5-7 day shipping to the moon...
Not Gambling. (Score:2)
Everyone tries to buy at the lowest price and sell at the highest.
Pretty typical negotiating practice in capitalism. It's called a "Sale", as in "This thing is on sale for half off! Great deal!"
It is very hard to raise the base price of things, but easy to offer a discount.
If you offer to high a price, you lose a customer. If you lose to many customers, you either go out of business or offer discounts.
That said, the smartest way to do it is to offer a limited time sale to start your business. Then you
Leason: (Score:2)
NASA is not the DoD.
he gambled and lost (Score:3, Informative)
On a Fed contract, if a lower bidder meets all the qualifications they will get it, barring some really unusual event. Once a contract is awarded price and terms can be negotiated; for example it could be a not to exceed with various options. I've had non-US government contracts awarded where the contracting officer asked if the price was negotiable as we were the best qualified by far but a bit high. Generally they were funded by some agency su as USAID or WB and thus had caps on the amount. We said of course but need to be sure of what the final scope is so we don't just give away our services.
Of course, winning a contract isn't the end because of protests, lawsuits, etc. Bezos will no doubt go to various congressional types and point out the jobs at stake in hopes they will fund development of his lander as well and direct NASA to spend the money.
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Contracts I have bid on have had the concept of T1 and P1. There is a technical bid and bidders are ranked on that as T1, T2,T3 etc - T1 being the best technical proposal. Then there is the financial proposal which are P1,P2,P3. Sometimes if the differences in P are not too big, the committee will ask the T1 bidder if they will match the P1 price and award it to them even if someone else was P1.
Yea, that is what I meant by unusual circumstances. generally, IIRC, the tech part is done first and then the price is looked at.
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I have also seen bidding processes where the requestee hadnt really though out what they want. After technical bids come in they realize there are lot of things they need whch were not in the original RFP so sometimes they will use the technical bids to refine their RFP and then reissue the RFP to all bidders. The idea is s
Musk's playbook (Score:5, Insightful)
FWIW, I'm no fan of how Musk does business, but in this case I think SpaceX and Musk had the right strategy. Musk is a master of developing technology in companies that perennially lose money, selling tax credits notwithstanding. Musk and SpaceX can afford to bid this contract and lose money on it, because the know-how, the staff training and organization building, the technology development and the just sheer prestige SpaceX would get from this contract far outweighs the revenue. They would approach this with a price they could justify, put a firm-fixed price on it and eat any cost overruns because 1) NASA Will still pay them billions, and 2) the value of SpaceX being the first commercial entity to go to the moon will forever land them as the leader in space flight.
Blue Origin just looked at this contract differently, and the wrong way, if they really expected to be "negotiated down".
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It's more than that. SpaceX wants to go to Mars. The NASA contract is simply paying them to do what they were going to develop on their own anyway. There will be a bit more work, some extra launches, and building some extra Starships, but essentially it's mostly free money for SpaceX.
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He doubtless has plans to do the same thing with this program
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I disagree on the moon as a waystation, but it's an excellent location to test equipment for Mars. The need isn't for a waystation, but for refueling, which can be done in orbit. They can even send a tanker alongside to refuel on the way to Mars if need be. But they'll develop the refueling for sending Starships to the moon. The big trick with Mars is that the journey is longer, so they have to carry food and supplies on a completely different scale. Landing on Mars will also be different, as the gravi
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"Musk and SpaceX can afford to bid this contract and lose money on it"
I'm sure SpaceX bid the HLS contract on a slim margin, but I don't know why people seem to think that SpaceX is continually losing money on their contracts. Musk is rich but he's not rich enough to throw money at SpaceX, build out Starlink and finance Tesla all at once. In a worse case scenario you might be right and they might lose some money while gaining some experience/prestige, but I highly doubt they bid it expecting that to occur
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Games suck (Score:2)
I don't negotiate with vendors either at work, they're told to bid at a very competitive rate and if they're higher than a competitor with a very similar product, they're out. The only time I've negotiated was for a vendor that didn't have any competitors at the time.
I know we aren't where SpaceX is in terms of tech (Score:4, Funny)
...but if you give us a chance, we'd be willing to do it for a lot more money.
Which is Better? (Score:2)
I'm wondering how the two proposals scored when NASA evaluated them before looking at the price. I've been involved in some municipal bids where the proposals are first scored on an established criteria, and then the prices are evaluated before making the final decision. In some cases a more expensive bid may be selected if it scored higher. NASA may not have released their scoring, but does anyone honestly believe that even at the same price they would have selected Blue Origin?
I suspect they chose Spac
Re:Which is Better? (Score:5, Informative)
In that model, you set up separate teams. One of them sets out their requirements, splitting them in to mandatory and desirable elements. The desirable elements are then given an importance rating.
A second team then takes each bid and uses the scoring model set up by the first team [that had no sight of the bids]. First, they check each bid against the mandatory requirements - any gaps and the bid is automatically rejected. Then they take each optional bid and score the bid on say a 1-10 scale based on the quality of their response. Lastly, they take the ‘importance rating’ of the desirable-but-not-mandatory elements and multiply that by the scores awarded. Highest score wins.
If you follow the process diligently, not only to you get a clean audit trail of working, which means you can show you were not applying bias but you also get, objectively, to the best result.
Which might be why Bezos is suing.
Re:Which is Better? (Score:4, Interesting)
Your description of the process doesn't mention the bid amount. Blue Origin was much higher.
As I remember, SpaceX scored higher on proven technical ability, quality of management, and price. Not only that, but their bid conformed closely to the required specs, and Blue Origin had some eccentric design that wasn't what NASA asked for.
In other words, Bezos screwed up in more ways than just his negotiating strategy.
Car salesman analogy... (Score:1)
So basically, NASA checked a few local auto dealers for the best price on a shiny new Corvette, Bezos tried to get away with hitting them at $10K over MSRP, and NASA did what so many new car buyers fail to do on a daily basis: they walked away from a clearly BAD deal and found one that was far more favorable.
Blue Origin's offer is worse even ignore the price (Score:2)
All bids are gambles. So what? (Score:2)
You gotta ask yourself... (Score:1)
The one built by a company that has tens if not hundreds of successful launches under it's belt -- including sending humans into high-earth orbit?
Or, the one built by a company that has only one successful, non-orbital, ballistic joy-ride?
Negotiating a major contract that you haven't won? (Score:2)
I've heard of situations (unfortunately too common) where contractors in major government contracts got more money after they've been working on a project for a while but I don't know if I've ever heard of a contractor in a 3 way race thinking they would negotiate their bid down after submitting it. I would guess that goes against more than a few ethics rules, especially when their bid was nearly double that of their competitor. Even with the winning SpaceX contract NASA didn't reduce the bid amount when