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The reason is that NASA doesn't even have the budget to afford a single winner, and SpaceX agreed to update its payment schedule to make the contract work.
by rtsil 6y ago
The reason is that NASA doesn't even have the budget to afford a single winner, and SpaceX agreed to update its payment schedule to make the contract work.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoThat normally isn't a show stopper. For example on commercial crew, Congress asked NASA to do Commercial Crew but didn't give them enough money to do it. Being forced to make an impossible choice, NASA awarded the contract, and the schedule shifted right until the money was available. I expect Congress expected them to do the same thing here, but then SpaceX forced the issue by coming in under the skimpy budget Congress gave. This forced NASA's hand, giving them almost no choice but to award the contract to SpaceX. Congress will be furious, both because they didn't award two contracts and because their golf course buddies didn't get the contract. But NASA played the hand that was dealt.
- rbanffy 6y agoThis is also a good way for NASA to tell Congress that, if they want business as usual, it’ll have to be budget as usual. It’s not nice the military get all the funding for their stupid toys.
- rst 6y agoWhich is... slightly baffling. Blue Origin doesn't have much of a track record actually getting stuff into orbit, but with Bezos's backing, you'd think the one thing they would have is flexibility on the payment schedule...
- nickik 6y agoBO might have that, but the other companies, LM and NG didn't. Even for Bezos its a tall order to spend billions for the LM and NG systems. I think he would rather spend that money on BO to develop whatever he wants to develop next. I don't think you want to be a commercial costumer of LM and NG, that doesn't sound fun.
- bbatsell 6y agoBezos made a bet that if he assembled an unholy conglomeration of defense contractors with dozens of senators on their payroll and named it "The National Team", NASA couldn't dare not give it to him. That limited Blue's flexibility, and they lost.
- Teever 6y agoBO is sort of an opaque entity to me and I had not heard about the conglomeration of defense contractors. Do you have any links to resources that can tell me more about that?
- ativzzz 6y agoFrom the article, > SpaceX beat out Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, which had formed what it called a “national team” by partnering with aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper
- rbanffy 6y agoQuite frankly, their proposal was horrendous.
- nickik 6y agoI just finished reading the selection statement. And the National Team demanded significant upfront payments. NASA also identified significant risk because the LM Orion derived assent module would be far behind in development compared to the rest of the architecture. The problem BO has is that they don't have the credibility to build a human capsule that can launch from the moon. But working with LM means they are gone do nothing more then the minimum and they want to be paid without risk for them.
- rtsil 6y agoReading the Source selection document (1), NASA only negotiated with SpaceX because the company was: > both very highly rated from a technical and management perspective and that also had, by a wide margin, the lowest initially-proposed price. BO didn't rate as high and was more expensive. (1) https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-a-source-selection-statement-final.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-...
- robertlagrant 6y agoHe'd have to sell a lot of Amazon stock to try and make that work. Who knows what that would raise once he starts selling.