In exchange, Bezos said, Blue Origin would accept a firm, fixed-priced contract and cover any system development cost overruns. This offer provides time for government appropriation actions to catch up.” “This offer is not a deferral, but is an outright and permanent waiver of those payments. In his letter on Monday, Bezos wrote: “Blue Origin will bridge the budgetary funding shortfall by waiving all payments in the current and next two government fiscal years up to $2bn to get the program back on track right now. The company filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Office, accusing the agency of giving SpaceX an unfair advantage by allowing it to revise its pricing. The space agency cited its own funding shortfalls, SpaceX’s proven record of orbital missions and other factors in a contract decision that a senior Nasa official, Kathy Lueders, said represented “what’s the best value to the government”.Īt the time Blue Origin said the decision “not only delays but also endangers America’s return to the moon”. Blue Origin had partnered with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper in its bid. Nasa had been expected to winnow the field to two companies, but went all in on SpaceX. Nasa handed Musk’s SpaceX a $2.9bn contract to build a spacecraft to bring astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2024, rejecting bids from Blue Origin and the defense contractor Dynetics. In an open letter to the Nasa administrator, Bill Nelson – a former astronaut and Democratic senator from Florida – Bezos, who last week completed a suborbital trip to space, criticised the agency’s decision to award the moon contract to rival company SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, in April.īezos urged Nasa to reconsider and said Blue Origin would waive payments in the government’s current fiscal year and the next after that up to $2bn, and pay for an orbital mission to vet its technology.
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