- On Friday, SpaceX received an exclusive $ 2.9 billion contract to help NASA return to the moon.
- NASA and SpaceX have negotiated a contract, excluding Blue Origin based on its first major offer.
- “We’re looking to find out more about the selection,” a Blue Origin spokesman told Insider.
- See more articles on the Insider business page.
Many people in the space and science communities are looking for more details about how NASA chose only SpaceX to return to the moon, when the agency’s stated plans called for two trading partners.
SpaceX had competed against Blue Origin and Dynetics for a pair of contracts for NASA’s Artemis program. But NASA announced Friday that SpaceX will receive an exclusive $ 2.9 billion contract.
Blue Origin had collaborated with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper to form the “National Team”.
A Blue Origin spokesman told Insider on Saturday: “The national team doesn’t have much information yet. We are looking to find out more about the selection.”
Elsewhere, the holidays were in order.
“NASA rules !!” Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, said. “We are honored to be part of the @NASAArtemis team.”
Last year, NASA selected the three companies to develop a new “human landing system” or HLS in NASA’s transcript. The agency intends to return to the moon immediately after 2024 and eventually set up a permanent base there.
Blue Origin, which was founded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, called its Moon Lander Blue Moon. Dynetics, a defense contractor, named the design the Human Landing System Dynetics.
The HLS winner, SpaceX’s Starship, uses the company’s Raptor engines, along with the designs of its Falcon 9 and Dragon vehicles, NASA said. It will be completely reusable, with a landing system designed “for trips to the moon, Mars and other destinations.”
“By taking a collaborative approach to collaborating with the industry while leveraging NASA’s technical expertise and proven capabilities, we will bring American astronauts back to the surface of the Moon again, this time to explore new areas for longer periods of time,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA’s HLS program manager, in a statement.
NASA was expected to choose two of the companies. But budget concerns led to the choice of SpaceX, which has restructured its proposal to meet NASA spending expectations, according to the agency.
On April 2, NASA chose SpaceX as a “conditional selection”, which allowed the agency to enter into post-selection negotiations with it, according to a document prepared by Kathryn Lueders, the Source Selection Authority.
Lueders wrote that each of the three companies’ “Option A” proposals is above the agency’s proposed budget for the HLS program.
Lueders added: “Therefore, it was my decision that NASA should, as a first step, open price negotiations with the Option A bidder, which is both highly valued technically and also with a wide margin, the lowest price originally proposed – SpaceX. “
Musk’s company resubmitted its proposal on April 7, according to NASA.
“Although SpaceX’s revised proposal contained an updated stage of payments that fall within NASA’s current budget, SpaceX did not propose a general price reduction,” Lueders wrote.
After the announcement, SpaceX employees and space enthusiasts flooded Linkedin and Twitter with positive messages. Many posted rocket emojis, as we might expect.
But other space enthusiasts and budget hawks have questioned NASA’s decision to give up a trading partner for such a monumental mission.
Casey Dreier, chief lawyer and senior space policy adviser at The Planetary Society, said on Twitter that he is “Sincerely shocked” that NASA would choose a single trading partner. More partners would boost competition, he said.
“Of course, SpaceX always acts as if it’s in constant competition with itself. And it delivers 100% of the capacity and price promised so far,” Dreier said.
Representative Robert Aderholt of Alabama issued a statement saying NASA’s decision “raised a lot of questions.”
SpaceX had previously entered into agreements with NASA and the US Air Force with “very high” price tags, he said.
He added: “The years of delay in developing Falcon Heavy, as well as recent tests of the Starship program, as reported in the news, also raise technical and programming questions.”
Several of the SpaceX spacecraft prototypes exploded during test flights.
Dynetics did not return a request for comment on Saturday.