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I have the opposite takeaway actually. Contract protests are pretty common, although they don't always make it to the Court of Federal Claims. OTOH, filing a l
by Rebelgecko 5y ago
I have the opposite takeaway actually.
Contract protests are pretty common, although they don't always make it to the Court of Federal Claims. OTOH, filing a lawsuit saying that the government should shut down another launch provider even when you're not competing for the same contracts (yet) seems like more of a kneecapping effort. Like I said, SpaceX and ULA both filed lawsuits before they ever made it to orbit so I don't think that criticism applies exclusively to one company.
- CamperBob2 5y agoOne obvious difference is that Blue Origin has less at stake, because they can't fail. Musk famously put his last $40M on the line in 2008 to keep the company afloat, while Bezos is basically Citizen Kane. "You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... 60 years."
- panick21 5y agoYou are taking things out of context. ULA was a government formed monopoly and the Dod basically wanted to hand them a block contract that would basically give them a monopoly for very long time. SpaceX would have been excluded from Dod flights for basically a decade or more, even within a few years they had the means to compete. This was clearly a totally anti-competitive and this is why SpaceX won and since then such large block contracts are no longer done. The Dod still hands out too many launches at once but what they tried with ULA initially was far, far worse.