![]() In a graphic displayed at the event, ASU's name was on a list of payload customers along with Airbus, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and various aerospace companies. The founder unveiled the moon lander at an event in Washington, D.C., while painting the picture of a sci-fi future involving millions of humans living and working in space stations and on the moon. The memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by the parties makes ASU a "customer" of Blue Origin, according to Bezos. The lengthy delay to release a basic public record is somewhat ironic for both ASU, home to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and Bezos, owner of the Washington Post.īezos' company ignored several emails and calls from Phoenix New Times about the document.īack on May 9, the announcement that Arizona State University and Blue Origin had signed a deal to provide transportation of payloads to the moon received international headlines. NASA will resume work with SpaceX under the Option A contract as soon as possible,” the agency said in a statement.Arizona State University and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company claim they'll put a payload on the moon by 2024.īut they can't even release the payload contract they signed after two months. Court of Federal Claims denied Blue Origin’s bid protest, upholding NASA’s selection of SpaceX to develop and demonstrate a modern human lunar lander. “NASA was notified Thursday that the U.S. With the Blue Origin lawsuit thrown out, NASA appears to be moving forward with its SpaceX contract. NASA’s announcement provided that the number of awards the agency would make was subject to the amount of funding available for the program.” SpaceX’s bid was the highest rated and came in at $2.9 billion, far less than either Blue Origin or Dynetics.īlue Origin said in its lawsuit that if it had known that NASA was going to ignore FRRs and make cost a priority, the company “would have proposed a fundamentally different HLS design,” and it “would have engineered and proposed an entirely different architecture with corresponding differences in technical management and price scores.” ![]() Advertisementįurther Reading Here’s why Blue Origin thinks it is justified in continuing to protest NASAThe GAO dismissed both arguments, saying that “NASA did not violate procurement law or regulation when it decided to make only one award. Blue Origin said that NASA’s request for bids called for an FRR for every launch and that SpaceX’s bid only covered one of more than a dozen launches. Such meetings allow NASA officials to be briefed on what will happen during a mission, giving them an important opportunity for oversight of public-private partnerships. ![]() ![]() Jeff Bezos was more conciliatory, saying in a tweet, "Not the decision we wanted, but we respect the court’s judgment, and wish full success for NASA and SpaceX on the contract."īlue Origin claimed that, in granting the award to SpaceX, NASA ignored a requirement that bidders submit a flight readiness review (FRR) for each part of the landing systems. “Returning astronauts safely to the Moon through NASA’s public-private partnership model requires an unprejudiced procurement process alongside sound policy that incorporates redundant systems and promotes competition.” Further Reading This is probably why Blue Origin keeps protesting NASA’s lunar lander award“Our lawsuit with the Court of Federal Claims highlighted the important safety issues with the Human Landing System procurement process that must still be addressed,” Blue Origin said in a statement.
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