SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Explains Why Blue Origin’s Starship Lawsuit Makes no Sense
DannyB writes:
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk explains why Blue Origin's Starship lawsuit makes no sense
[....] After the details broke in new court documents filed on Wednesday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk weighed in on Twitter to offer his take on why the arguments Blue Origin has hinged its lawsuit on make very little sense.
Elon Musk tweeted:
We always do flight readiness reviews! This argument makes no sense.
[....] most of the opening argument is legible. In short, Blue Origin appears to have abandoned the vast majority of arguments it threw about prior to suing NASA and the US government and is now almost exclusively hinging its case on the claim that SpaceX violated NASA's procurement process by failing to account for a specific kind of prelaunch review before every HLS-related Starship launch.
[....] As Blue Origin has exhaustively reminded anyone within earshot for the last five months, SpaceX's Starship Moon lander proposal is extremely complex and NASA is taking an undeniable risk (of delays, not for astronauts) by choosing SpaceX. Nevertheless, NASA's Kathy Lueders and a source evaluation panel made it abundantly clear in public selection statement that SpaceX's proposal was by far the most competent, offering far a far superior management approach and technical risk no worse than Blue Origin's far smaller, drastically less capable lander.
[....] Curiously, Blue Origin nevertheless does make a few coherent and seemingly fact-based arguments in the document. Perhaps most notably, it claims that when NASA ultimately concluded that it didn't have funds for even a single award (a known fact) and asked SpaceX - its first choice - to make slight contract modifications to make the financial side of things work, NASA consciously chose to waive the need for an FRR before every HLS Starship launch. Only via purported cost savings from those waived reviews, Blue Origin claims, was NASA able to afford SpaceX's proposal - which, it's worth noting, was more than twice as cheap as the next cheapest option (Blue Origin).
One thing Blue Origin's New Shepard has going for it: suborbital hops don't need a "waste management system".
See also:
Judge Releases Redacted Lunar Lander Lawsuit from Bezos' Blue Origin Against NASA-SpaceX Contract
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