US entrepreneur and business magnate Elon Musk gestures during a visit at the Tesla Gigafactory plant under construction, on August 13, 2021 in Gruenheide near Berlin, eastern Germany. (Photo by Patrick Pleul / POOL / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK PLEUL/POOL/ AFP via Getty Images)
Regarding Blue Origin, which was filed after losing the NASA contract, SpaceX boss Elon Musk gave a report at the Code Conference a few days agoQuite harsh evaluation. He bluntly stated that Jeff Bezos, the opponent’s boss, should “spend more time on orbit instead of in lawsuits”, and ridiculed that Bezos can’t “play a lawsuit on the moon.” In Musk’s view, the suborbital manned missions of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are “a step in the direction of orbit”, which implies that there is still a certain gap compared with SpaceX.
Musk has always been known to dare to speak, but in the case of the lawsuit triggered by the NASA contract, what he said is not unreasonable.according to The Verge Judging from the obtained NASA documents, the authorities believe that Blue Origin has “gambled” on the initial $5.9 billion offer for the lunar lander. It is said that the price set by BO is much higher than the necessary number, and NASA suspects that Bezos’ company has already included the amount of subsequent bargaining before the quotation. In addition, even if the Senate clearly stated that NASA was unable to obtain the necessary budget, BO seemed to assume that NASA would inevitably receive the full approval from Congress based on the quotation.
Everyone knows what happened next, and NASA directly chose SpaceX, which offered $2.9 billion. Blue Origin has raised objections to this, and even made a big discount at the very last moment. But it was done, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office also rejected BO’s objections, and the latter took NASA to court. In a later interview, Megan Mitchell, vice president of Blue Origin, told The Verge that she believed that BO gave “a good proposal” and disagreed with NASA’s “gamble” statement. Although the Accountability Office has also stated that NASA’s security review of the proposal does have errors, they still support SpaceX on the grounds that BO cannot explain how NASA’s actions have provided SpaceX with an unfair competitive advantage.
Interestingly, after Elon Musk posted a mocking remark, an Amazon representative instead of Blue Origin sent an email to the editor of the main site. Among them are listed “a large number” of SpaceX complaints to the US government for contract or other reasons. Obviously, they want to prove that Musk is not a fuel-efficient lamp. To be honest, there is really no objection to this point, but in the current public opinion environment, Musk’s speeches often cause huge enthusiasm. When it comes to slobbers, Bezos is probably no better than this dude…