{"id":17566,"date":"2021-04-28T01:47:51","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T17:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/elon-musk-taunts-jeff-bezos-over-blue-origins-challenge-to-spacexs-contract-for-lunar-lander\/"},"modified":"2021-04-28T01:47:51","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T17:47:51","slug":"elon-musk-taunts-jeff-bezos-over-blue-origins-challenge-to-spacexs-contract-for-lunar-lander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/elon-musk-taunts-jeff-bezos-over-blue-origins-challenge-to-spacexs-contract-for-lunar-lander\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk taunts Jeff Bezos over Blue Origin\u2019s challenge to SpaceX\u2019s contract for lunar lander"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_491217\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-491217\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-491217\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/190410-musk-bezos-630x366.jpg\" alt=\"Musk and Bezos\" width=\"630\" height=\"366\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/190410-musk-bezos-630x366.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/190410-musk-bezos-768x446.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/190410-musk-bezos.jpg 933w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-491217\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos have been rivals in space for a decade. (Musk Photo: TED via YouTube; Bezos Photo: GeekWire \/ Kevin Lisota)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The billionaire space battle just got kicked up a notch, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture challenging NASA\u2019s award of a $2.9 billion lunar lander contract to SpaceX \u2014 and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk replying with a double entendre.<\/p>\n<p>Monday\u2019s contretemps in commercial space began when Blue Origin sent the Government Accountability Office a 50-page filing (plus more than 100 pages\u2019 worth of attachments) claiming that NASA improperly favored SpaceX in the deliberations that led to this month\u2019s single-source award.<\/p>\n<p>A team led by Blue Origin \u2014 with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper as partners \u2014 had competed for a share of NASA funding to develop a system capable of landing astronauts on the moon in the mid-2020s. Alabama-based Dynetics was also in the competitiion, and has also filed a protest with the GAO.<\/p>\n<p>Both protests contend that NASA was wrong to make only one contract award, despite Congress\u2019 less-than-expected support levels, due to the importance of promoting competition in the lunar lander market. Both protests also contest many of the claims NASA made in a document explaining its selection process. For example, Blue Origin says NASA erroneously determined that it was seeking advance payments for development work.<\/p>\n<p>Although both protests delve deeply into the details of procurement, Blue Origin\u2019s challenge has an added twist of personal rivalry.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past decade, Bezos and Musk have repeatedly butted heads over their rival space programs, and Musk has usually prevailed. It was SpaceX, not Blue Origin, that won NASA\u2019s nod to use Kennedy Space Center\u2019s historic Launch Pad 39A in 2013. Two years later, SpaceX turned back Blue Origin\u2019s effort to patent the procedure for landing a rocket at sea. And last year, Blue Origin lost out to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance in a multibillion-dollar competition for rocket development support from the U.S. Space Force.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Blue Origin protests NASA's choice for moon mission\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ellxvRApW3g?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This week\u2019s protest sets off a 100-day clock for the GAO to weigh whether NASA\u2019s contract award should be reversed. And if history is any guide, the decision is likely to stand \u2014 although the fact that SpaceX revised its contract bid after confidential discussions with NASA could complicate the case.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t get a chance to revise and that\u2019s fundamentally unfair,\u201d Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith told The New York Times.<\/p>\n<p>In response to GeekWire\u2019s inquiry, NASA said it couldn\u2019t comment on the protests by Blue Origin and Dynetics \u201cdue to pending litigation.\u201d SpaceX and Blue Origin didn\u2019t immediately respond to GeekWire\u2019s email inquiries.<\/p>\n<p>However, Musk twisted the knife a bit on Twitter, using a phrase with sexual overtones to note that Blue Origin hasn\u2019t yet launched a rocket to orbit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan\u2019t get it up (to orbit) lol,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Musk\u2019s comments to The Washington Post addressed questions about Blue Origin\u2019s protest more directly. He referred to the fact that Blue Origin\u2019s team was seeking $6 billion from NASA to develop its lunar lander.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe BO bid was just way too high,\u201d said Musk, referring to Blue Origin by its initials. \u201cDouble that of SpaceX and SpaceX has much more hardware progress.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX has proposed adapting its Starship super-rocket for NASA\u2019s use as a lunar lander. The next in a series of high-altitude tests of Starship prototypes is scheduled to take place in Texas this week.<\/p>\n<p>Musk also noted that Bezos has announced he\u2019ll step down from his CEO post at Amazon in June, in order to spend more time on Blue Origin and his other non-Amazon pursuits.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think he needs to run BO full time for it to be successful. Frankly, I hope he does,\u201d Musk told the Post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos have been rivals in space for a decade. (Musk Photo: TED via YouTube; Bezos Photo: GeekWire \/ Kevin Lisota) The billionaire space battle just got kicked up a notch, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture challenging NASA\u2019s award of a $2.9 billion lunar [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1508,509,1045,1046,2043,625,190,316,4328],"class_list":["post-17566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-moon","tag-blue-origin","tag-elon-musk","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-lunar-lander","tag-moon","tag-nasa","tag-spacex","tag-spacex-starship"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17566"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}