SpaceX monopolizes the moon landing contract, Blue Origin sues NASA, will the plan to return to the moon fail?

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) exclusively awarded the contract for the lunar lander in the 2024 return to the moon to Elon Musk's Space aerospace company. The bidding company Blue Origin was indignant and filed a complaint with the US federal government, demanding that NASA change its decision. However, the Federal Government Accountability Office rejected Blue Origin's appeal and upheld NASA's decision.

Blue Sky Origin angrily sued NASA, which was actually a criticism of the government.

What caused this lawsuit?

As early as 2017, NASA finalized a plan called "Artemis", the core content of which is to return humans to the moon and prepare for manned landings on Mars. This plan will build a space station in the lunar orbit, and people who will land on the moon and go to Mars in the future will depart from there.

The entire mission is expected to cost $28 billion, of which $16 billion will be used to develop the lunar lander and realize the manned return to the moon in 2024.

NASA's Artemis program is divided into two missions.

The first stage is to transport people and cargo from Earth to lunar orbit, which will be completed by NASA using the Space Launch System (SLS). This is a launch vehicle one size larger than the Saturn V, and will send a simple space station of about 50 tons to lunar orbit. This space station is named "Moon Gate". Astronauts will board the new version of the Orion spacecraft to the Moon Gate space station, which can carry 6 to 7 people at a time.

The second part is to send astronauts and cargo to the moon from the Lunar Gate, and then take the astronauts back to the space station after completing the mission. This task is packaged and completed by commercial companies. There are three companies participating in the bidding, namely Blue Origin Aerospace, Aerospace Dynamics, and SpaceX. NASA promised in the bidding announcement that only one of the three bidders would be eliminated in the end, and two would be selected from three.

But in April this year, NASA finally gave the contract directly to Musk's SpaceX, so Blue Origin was kicked out of the plan. This angered his boss, Amazon's founder and former world's richest man Jeff Bezos, who complained to the government about NASA and demanded that NASA correct its mistakes, but the Government Accountability Office replied that NASA had no "improper behavior" in this bidding.

For this reason, Blue Origin still did not give up and filed a lawsuit against NASA, saying that the deal had fundamental problems and was very unfair. Recently, NASA further responded, claiming that it had learned about Blue Origin's lawsuit and was reviewing the details of the case.

Why did NASA breach the contract and exclusively select SpaceX as the contractor?

According to some people's inherent thinking, since Blue Origin is so indignant, maybe there is something fishy going on. In fact, the answer given by NASA officials is very simple, mainly due to insufficient funds, with only a budget of 3 billion US dollars, and only 800 million US dollars in hand so far. SpaceX's offer is 2.9 billion US dollars, which is within the budget, that's all.

How much did Blue Origin bid? 6 billion, where does NASA get that much money? And even if it did, why waste taxpayers' money on Blue Origin? In that case, what reason does Blue Origin have to sue? They just seized on NASA's original promise that two companies would win the bid, which is also in line with the spirit of fair competition.

But the problem is, if you offer a sky-high price and NASA has to pay the price, where will NASA get the money? And NASA is not only considering the money, but also the development progress and technological maturity of the landers of several companies.

As early as a year ago, NASA allocated $975 million in research and development funds, which were distributed to three companies. Blue Origin received $570 million, Aerospace Dynamics received $270 million, and SpaceX received the least, only $135 million.

From this point of view, NASA is not biased, right? So what is the research and development progress of these three companies?

Blue Origin's boss Bezos was once the world's richest man and had no shortage of money. He recruited a large number of expert engineers from established rocket companies and formed a professional team. He started developing rockets 20 years earlier than Musk. But in these 20 years, the company has not made any big moves. So far, it has only launched 15 straight-up and straight-down horizontal rockets, and can only test them in suborbital orbits. It has never sent anything into Earth orbit.

This time, knowing that they were not strong enough, they invited Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and other big players to join the bidding. They were basically all veteran national teams, and the project was subcontracted to five companies. But what has been done so far? They only boasted a lot, saying that the New Glenn rocket and the New Armstrong rocket were as powerful as Musk's Starship, but there was no sign of them. A bunch of PPTs were beautifully made, but are PPTs alone useful?

In fact, NASA knows very well that these veteran national teams have mastered mature space shuttle technology. The engines, rocket bodies, boosters, etc. are almost all modified from old technologies. Logically, this kind of "development" should be fast, but these big guys have been working on it for decades and spent tens of billions of dollars, but nothing has come out. I really don't know what they are doing.

Let's take a look at Musk's SpaceX. It changes almost every day, and launches more rockets a year than Blue Origin. It has completed rocket recovery and Starship recovery. The Dragon spacecraft has also completed the task of sending astronauts to the space station many times, and sent 4 civilians to the Earth orbit at an altitude of 575 kilometers for 3 days, all of which were fully automatic without a driver.

Some friends may wonder why there is no mention of a company called Aerospace Power that participated in the bidding. In fact, this company is even less worthy of mention. It is a complete hodgepodge. The so-called Aerospace Power Company is a network of ordinary small enterprises, and the project is divided among 25 small companies. Therefore, this company itself is just to make up the numbers and has no expectation of getting the order.

Among these three companies, only SpaceX has the strongest overall strength, with almost all of its technology and manufacturing done in-house without any external assistance. So if you were a NASA decision maker, who would you give the bid to?

Now let’s take a look at the three companies’ moon landing plans.

All three companies have proposed different plans for landing on the moon.

The Blue Origin plan is quite standard, basically an enlarged version of the Apollo moon landing mission of the last century. The height of the Apollo lunar module was 7 meters, and this one has been enlarged to 11 meters, and the landing and takeoff are basically the same. After the Apollo lunar module separated from the spacecraft, it landed with the reverse thrust engine, and then the astronauts climbed out of the ladder, moved in a pile of rocks after completing the mission, and flew to the lunar orbit on the ascent stage, while the descent stage remained on the moon.

The new plan is the same, the only difference is that the ascent phase will dock with the lunar orbital space station and will not return to Earth for the time being; while the ascent phase of the Apollo mission will dock with the command module and then return to Earth.

Therefore, the Blue Origin lunar module plan can only be regarded as a relatively mature and safe plan, with no new ideas and two criticisms: First, the descent stage must be left on the moon, which wastes about one-third of the manufacturing cost; second, the astronauts are on the top of the lunar module, and there is a drop of about 10 meters to the lunar surface, and they need to climb a ladder to get down. Let's think about it, on the earth we are familiar with, climbing a 5-meter ladder is a bit scary, let alone a 10-meter ladder of three floors? In addition, the astronauts are wearing bulky spacesuits, which is very risky.

Aerospace Power's proposal made up for this defect. They designed a shorter lunar module. In order to reduce the bottom height, they installed fuel tanks and reverse thrust engines on both sides of the lunar module, just like holding a few large watermelons under the armpits, so that the astronauts can go down to the lunar surface by two or three steps after leaving the module.

The recycling rate of this short lunar module seems to be higher than that of Blue Origin, because the lunar module has four fuel tanks, two for descent and two for ascent, so only two fuel tanks need to be discarded when returning, and the rest can be recycled. But the biggest weakness of this plan is that it does not have its own rocket, but has to carry NASA's SLS rocket. It is a patchwork thing, so it was killed at the beginning.

Compared with the above two companies, SpaceX's plan is much more advanced and seems to have entered the science fiction era. Their plan completely breaks through the Apollo mission model of the last century, using the latest and largest SN starship as a shuttle to travel between the lunar gate and the lunar surface. Except for the fuel, the spacecraft can be reused.

This starship can carry 100 tons of cargo and personnel each time, and can carry 100 tons of cargo back each time, which is a far cry from the astronauts' landing on the moon in the last century, which was just a few hops on the moon and a bunch of rocks back. Therefore, this plan is fully in line with NASA's requirements for building a base on the lunar surface and a space station in orbit.

The most important thing is that the Raptor engine developed by Musk is excellent, and the Starship has become increasingly mature after many explosive tests.

The Starship is huge, 50 meters high and 9 meters in diameter, equivalent to a 17-story building. When the Starship docks with the Lunar Gate or Orion spacecraft, it is like wearing a small hat on a bald head. In order to solve the problem of astronauts getting down from the top cabin, the spacecraft has a special elevator, so that astronauts can take the elevator down comfortably.

Since there is no air on the moon, the lunar version of the Starship does not need to be covered with heat-insulating tiles, nor does it need to do somersaults in the sky. It only needs to go straight up and down and then push back to land. This will also reduce costs, so the price is so cheap that it makes NASA's heart beat fast.

Compared with the previous two companies' proposals, Musk's proposal is not just a little different, but completely subversive (picture above: comparison of three companies' lunar landers). If NASA does not choose Musk's SpaceX, then it is a big mistake or there is something fishy going on.

So, can NASA return to the moon in 2024 as planned?

Due to Blue Origin's lawsuit, NASA has suspended the progress of the HLS contract at the request of the court. This is the second time that the contract has been suspended. The final outcome of the lawsuit depends on the judge's decision, but it will take a lot of time for the court to collect evidence for this.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson admitted in an interview that the lawsuit may delay the return to the moon in 2024, but he did not give a specific answer as to how long the delay would be. However, he claimed that the planned Orion spacecraft EM-1 mission will continue to move forward at the end of this year or in January next year.

At the same time, Musk made a mocking and sarcastic tweet about the lawsuit on Twitter, saying: If talking and lawyers could get you into orbit, Bezos would have been on Pluto a long time ago.

Another factor that affects the return to the moon is the issue of space suits. NASA's Office of the Inspector General released a report on August 10, claiming that the 2024 return to the moon plan is difficult to achieve because the next generation of space suits will not be delivered until April 2025 at the earliest. The report revealed that a total of 27 companies supply various components for space suits.

In response, Musk jokingly responded: "It looks like there are too many cooks in the kitchen. If necessary, SpaceX can do it."

It is true. In the past, NASA's space projects, as long as they were large in scale, had many collaborating units. For example, the International Space Station has 16 participating countries. On the one hand, they share the benefits, and on the other hand, they each have their own strengths. But since Musk came along, he seems to be able to do everything, boasting one thing after another, but none of them have been blown out of proportion, but have become a real big shot.

But in this society, no one person can enjoy all the delicious food, and others can only drool over it. Now many big names in the past have been squeezed out by Musk and become little sheep, and they don’t even have grass to eat. It is inevitable that some people are dissatisfied and jealous. As for the return of humans to the moon, I think since it is already on the string, even if it is delayed, it will definitely be able to go there in 2025, otherwise it is unknown whether Musk will get there first by himself.

Many people say that Musk is an outlier, but isn’t it the appearance of an outlier that sometimes makes the world suddenly take a big step forward? What do you think? Welcome to discuss, thank you for reading.

The copyright of Space-Time Communication is original. Infringement and plagiarism are unethical behavior. Please understand and cooperate.