Jeff Bezos asks NASA for moon lander contract, gives to duvet billions in costs

Sizzling on the heels of its first crewed flight to suborbital location, Blue Starting up build reiterated that it needs a NASA moon lander contract — and wired that or no longer it’s willing to position numerous its luxuriate in cash into the reveal. 

Blue Starting up build founder Jeff Bezos, who became on the suborbital flight of the company’s Novel Shepard spacecraft on July 20, penned an originate letter to NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson the day earlier than currently (July 26). The missive requested the agency to award another crewed lander contract for its Artemis moon program and stated that Blue Starting up build is willing to duvet up to $2 billion in building and trying out costs if or no longer it’s chosen.

Bezos’ letter, which became posted on the Blue Starting up build web instruct online, comes three months after the Blue Starting up build-led “Nationwide Team” and Dynetics lost out within the final spherical of the opponents to SpaceX, which acquired a contract valued at $2.9 billion to mark its Starship spacecraft as the Artemis Human Touchdown Intention (HLS).

In photos: Blue Starting up build’s 1st Novel Shepard passenger originate with Jeff Bezos

Both Dynetics and Blue Starting up build filed protests with the U.S. Govt Accountability Pronounce of enterprise (GAO) in leisurely April, citing what they noticed as flaws within the HLS procurement route of. As mandated, NASA will withhold aid of the $2.9 billion unless the GAO finishes an investigation into the topic, projected to be in August.

“As a replace of investing in two competing lunar landers as at the birth supposed, the agency chose to confer a multi-year, multi-billion-greenback head originate to SpaceX,” Bezos wrote within the letter.

He added that the human landing map the Nationwide Team proposed can cruise on numerous automobiles, decreasing total risk to the human landing mission, and that NASA had cited this as a clear thing. 

“With out opponents, a short time into the contract, NASA will salvage itself with restricted solutions as it makes an try to negotiate missed deadlines, make adjustments and mark overruns,” Bezos wrote of the SpaceX alternative.

Bezos moreover stated that the HLS alternative route of became assorted from NASA’s lengthy industrial crew spacecraft procurement route of, which went by more than one rounds of alternative earlier than picking SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner in 2014 to within the raze cruise astronauts to and from the Global House Self-discipline.

“That [HLS] determination broke the mildew of NASA’s worthwhile industrial location programs by striking an cease to fundamental opponents for years to reach support,” Bezos wrote. 

(Crew Dragon flew its first operational crew in 2020 and is now normally launching astronauts. Starliner is arena to originate Friday, July 30, on its 2nd uncrewed test flight to the location arena, after failing to fulfill up with the orbiting lab on its first try, in December 2019.)

In his new letter, Bezos further alleged that handiest SpaceX became invited to send a revised budget, a complaint that has no longer yet been addressed formally by the GAO. “Blue Starting up build became no longer offered the same alternative. That became a mistake, it became queer and it became a missed alternative. Nonetheless it undoubtedly is no longer too leisurely to resolve.”

NASA officers beget stated that they’d beget loved to make a necessity two HLS companies, but Congress hasn’t allocated adequate cash for them to manufacture so. Bezos, the richest particular person on this planet, offered to again in this regard.

If Blue Starting up build is awarded a contract, the company will again “bridge the HLS budgetary funding shortfall” by “waiving all payments in potentially the newest and subsequent two government fiscal years up to $2B to secure this method support heading within the suitable path,” Bezos wrote within the letter. (The fiscal 2021 budget allocated $850 million to HLS, a pair of quarter of NASA’s $3.3 billion set a question to, whereas the 2022 budget is silent below negotiation in Congress.)

Bezos added that the provide is no longer a deferral but pretty a eternal waiver of the payments, and that Blue Starting up build is willing to settle for a fixed-mark contract for the lander with the company overlaying the associated payment of any overruns.

“Blue Starting up build will, at its luxuriate in mark, make contributions the enchancment and originate of a pathfinder mission to low-Earth orbit of the lunar descent reveal to further retire building and schedule dangers,” he added. “This pathfinder mission is obtainable as neatly as to the baseline notion of performing a precursor uncrewed landing mission sooner than risking any astronauts to the moon.”

Bezos moreover eminent that a NASA set a question to for knowledge from leisurely April, after the SpaceX contract became awarded, reveals that the agency is always silent drawn to more solutions. The set a question to, in accordance to a NASA press free up, asks corporations about their willingness to withhold in tips “offering Artemis astronaut transit services and products from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon.”

“Sadly, this new advance acquired’t mark aesthetic opponents because it’s rushed, it’s unfunded and it gives a multi-year head-originate to the one funded, single-provide vendor,” Bezos wrote.

As of Tuesday morning (July 27), there were no responses yet to the letter on the Twitter accounts of NASA, Nelson or agency deputy administrator Pam Melroy. It is no longer possible that we’re going to seem much (or any) public say unless the GAO investigation has wrapped up.

Linked: NASA unveils notion for Artemis ‘substandard camp’ on the moon previous 2024

No ‘Bezos bailout’

Rapidly after SpaceX acquired the HLS contract, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, added an modification to the broad, sprawling  Innovation and Competition Act, formerly identified as the Never-ending Frontier Act. The modification requested for an further $10 billion for the Artemis Human Touchdown Intention, invoking a necessity for opponents.

Cantwell represents Blue Starting up build’s home command of Washington, which raised a few eyebrows and objections on the time. As an illustration, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) rapid submitted another modification in response, with the next stated cause: “To put off the multi-billion-greenback Bezos Bailout.”

That more cash will possible no longer reach NASA’s procedure; the $10 billion modification lacks make stronger within the U.S. House of Representatives, which has yet to inch the Innovation and Competition Act.

Adding another layer of complexity to the HLS saga, Bezos and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk beget a longstanding contention that has at occasions devolved into name-calling and trolling. 

Apply Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Apply us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

Elizabeth Howell is a contributing author for House.com who’s one among the few Canadian journalists to document normally on location exploration. She is the author or co-author of a lot of books on location exploration. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. from the College of North Dakota in House Compare, and an M.Sc. from the same division. She moreover holds a bachelor of journalism diploma from Carleton College in Canada, the build she started her location-writing profession in 2004. Besides writing, Elizabeth teaches communications on the college and community college level, and for presidency coaching colleges. To explore her newest projects, apply Elizabeth on Twitter at @howellspace.