Blue Origin sues US government over NASA’s decision to award SpaceX lunar lander contract
By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business
Blue Origin filed a federal lawsuit Monday to challenge a NASA moon landing contract awarded solely to rival company SpaceX, upping the ante in an already tense standoff over the multibillion-dollar lunar lander program.
Details of the lawsuit are not publicly available because the documents are under seal, but Blue Origin claims it is an “attempt to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASA’s Human Landing System,” the company said in a statement. Human Landing System, or HLS, is the formal name of the program that’s at the heart of this legal battle, and it seeks to use private-sector contracting to develop, build and test the vehicle that will put astronauts on the moon for the first time in a half-century.
After initially pledging to offer multiple contracts to spur the development of at least two lunar landers that could compete against each other, NASA announced in April that it was giving only a single award to SpaceX for $2.9 billion, citing costs as a primary reason for the decision. Congress did not award NASA all the money it had requested for the HLS program.
Blue Origin previously attempted to fight the contracting decision with the US Government Accountability Office, but the GAO denied the protest.
“We firmly believe that the issues identified in this procurement and its outcomes must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition, and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America,” Blue Origin said in a statement.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has disparaged Blue Origin’s claims on Twitter for weeks, at one point saying that “If lobbying & lawyers could get u to orbit, [Blue Origin CEO Jeff] Bezos would be on Pluto [right now.]”
Blue Origin did not immediately respond to a request for a comment to Musk’s remarks.
Blue Origin had submitted a $5.9 billion bid and proposed working alongside aerospace industry giants such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin on the program.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
