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Bezos 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",
by bbatsell 5y ago
Bezos 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 5y 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 5y 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 5y agoQuite frankly, their proposal was horrendous.
- nickik 5y 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.