Saturday 31 July 2021
Commercial lunar landing device
Bezos has to accept defeat against Musk
In a tender for NASA’s first commercial moon landing, Jeff Bezos was unable to prevail against Elon Musk. In order to outdo his competitors after all, the Amazon boss offers the space agency money, then he also files a complaint.
Defeat for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in the race for the first commercial lunar landing device: After his company Blue Origin was unable to prevail against billionaire Elon Musk’s rival SpaceX in a corresponding tender by the US space agency Nasa, a complaint against this decision was also rejected been. Nasa did not violate any regulations in the decision, said the Government Accountability Office, an investigative body subordinate to the US Congress. The complaints from Blue Origin and Dynetics, which were also unsuccessful in the tender, were rejected.
Previously, Amazon founder Bezos had tried again with a money offer to change NASA’s mind. Blue Origin would, among other things, assume costs of up to two billion dollars for the development and manufacture of the lunar landing device in this and the next two years if the company were allowed to compete against Elon Musk’s competitor SpaceX, Bezos wrote in an open letter to Nasa Chef Bill Nelson. At first, NASA did not react to this, at least in public.
Nasa wanted to hire two companies
The agency decided against Blue Origin and Dynetics when the tender was issued in April and instead commissioned SpaceX to develop the first commercial landing device that will bring astronauts to the moon. The contract, valued at nearly three billion dollars, is part of what is known as the Artemis program. Originally, NASA had planned to commission two companies.
In the mission planned for 2024 at the earliest, four astronauts are to be brought into lunar orbit with the spacecraft “Orion”, where two of them will transfer to the SpaceX landing vehicle for the final approach to the moon. The aim is therefore to develop a fully reusable take-off and landing system that can be used for flights to destinations such as the moon and Mars.
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