from the heard-any-good-aerospace-jokes-lately? dept.
Judge releases redacted lunar lander lawsuit from Bezos’ Blue Origin against NASA-SpaceX contract:
The U.S. Federal Court of Claims on Wednesday released a redacted version of the lawsuit by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin against NASA over the lucrative lunar lander contract awarded to Elon Musk’s SpaceX earlier this year.
Quotes from the lawsuit:
22. SpaceX's proposal was selected and awarded despite its failure to meet a critical safety and technical requirement. The solitication requires offerors to propose one Flight Readiness Review ("FRR") prior to each launch of each HLS element, which includes each launch of all supporting spacecraft. [....] In spite of this clear deficiency in failing to have one Flight Readiness Review for each flight, NASA recognized the error in internal documents but ultimately failed to evaluate SpaceX's technical, management, or price proposals with respect to the extent of this error.
[....] 67. The Flight Readiness Review is, in large part, a safety review.
[....] 68. Many of the FRR Acceptance Criteria relate to ensuring the flight is safe: [....]
Direct download of redacted lawsuit is here.
Related Stories
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk explains why Blue Origin’s Starship lawsuit makes no sense
[....] After the details broke in new court documents filed on Wednesday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk weighed in on Twitter to offer his take on why the arguments Blue Origin has hinged its lawsuit on make very little sense.
Elon Musk tweeted:
We always do flight readiness reviews! This argument makes no sense.
[....] most of the opening argument is legible. In short, Blue Origin appears to have abandoned the vast majority of arguments it threw about prior to suing NASA and the US government and is now almost exclusively hinging its case on the claim that SpaceX violated NASA’s procurement process by failing to account for a specific kind of prelaunch review before every HLS-related Starship launch.
[....] As Blue Origin has exhaustively reminded anyone within earshot for the last five months, SpaceX’s Starship Moon lander proposal is extremely complex and NASA is taking an undeniable risk (of delays, not for astronauts) by choosing SpaceX. Nevertheless, NASA’s Kathy Lueders and a source evaluation panel made it abundantly clear in public selection statement that SpaceX’s proposal was by far the most competent, offering far a far superior management approach and technical risk no worse than Blue Origin’s far smaller, drastically less capable lander.
[....] Curiously, Blue Origin nevertheless does make a few coherent and seemingly fact-based arguments in the document. Perhaps most notably, it claims that when NASA ultimately concluded that it didn’t have funds for even a single award (a known fact) and asked SpaceX – its first choice – to make slight contract modifications to make the financial side of things work, NASA consciously chose to waive the need for an FRR before every HLS Starship launch. Only via purported cost savings from those waived reviews, Blue Origin claims, was NASA able to afford SpaceX’s proposal – which, it’s worth noting, was more than twice as cheap as the next cheapest option (Blue Origin).
One thing Blue Origin's New Shepard has going for it: suborbital hops don't need a "waste management system".
See also:
Judge Releases Redacted Lunar Lander Lawsuit from Bezos’ Blue Origin Against NASA-SpaceX Contract
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @06:03AM (4 children)
I'm not inclined to entrust the future of humanity with someone dumb enough to allow themselves to be divorce-raped to the tune of billions of dollars.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @06:10AM
Lauren Sánchez's beauty rivals that of Helen of Troy.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @08:48PM (2 children)
If humanity on Earth got fucked by a huge impact, any Mars colony would be fucked too. Self-sufficient heavy industry on Mars is a pipe dream, neither Elon nor Bezos can provide that. Neither are even trying.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @04:58AM
Anything is better than nothing. If you can grow things on Mars, at least a small group can live there. Propellant can be produced if there is a need to go back and repopulate Earth. Heavy industry wouldn't be needed there until much later.
The known NEOs that might impact Earth within the next couple of centuries are too small to cause extinction. It will be possible to mitigate those impacts. It would take a surprise interstellar object or nuclear war to fuck Earth up.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday September 24 2021, @04:23PM
> Self-sufficient heavy industry on Mars is a pipe dream
Why would you think that? Mars has everything Earth has, except for a thick atmosphere and thriving ecosystem - neither of which are necessary for heavy industry.
Now, making Mars self-sufficient within the next century is probably a pipe dream, but heavy industry will likely be one of the very first sectors to become (mostly) so, precisely because the products are *heavy*, and thus extremely expensive to import from Earth. I suspect the real latecomers will be pharmaceuticals, advanced microprocessors (simple ones can already be produced with inkjet printers), complex high-precision components, etc. All those industries that concentrate a whole lot of advanced technology and infrastructure into producing small, high-value products.
Heavy industry is not actually that complex. It gets complex when you're scaling up to handle the demands of billions of people in the most cost-effective manner possible, but we've been producing the same basic products for centuries using far simpler technology, and could do so on Mars as well, where the loss in cost efficiency would be easily offset by the ridiculous import costs from Earth.
Some modern improvements have even dramatically simplified things - for example Sadoway's prototype magma refineries can extract refined steel and other metals directly out of a vat of raw molten regolith using little more than strategically applied electricity. And the remaining molten rock could then be cast into useful building materials.
Also, the per-person demand is potentially far lower than on Earth, if you assume that the limited industrial base and shared challenge of survival discourages the culture of high consumption generated by planned obsolescence. There's a good chance that someone is still using your great-grandmother's cast iron pans, and there's no particular reason that couldn't be true of most mature technologies. Assuming replaceable batteries, there's no reason an electric car (or home appliance) designed for for robust longevity today couldn't still be running strong a century from now with most of its original parts. The upholstery is probably the least durable element, but could easily be designed for simple replacement and recycling.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 23 2021, @06:54AM (3 children)
Why didn't the judge slap him with a fine and court costs?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 23 2021, @03:53PM (2 children)
I'm no Bezos fan but it's not exactly frivolous to accuse the Trump admin of playing favorites and trying to punish Bezos because he's an 'enemy of the people.'
(Score: 2, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 23 2021, @06:03PM
Put aside the theatrics. He "punished" Bezos for his inferior product. The other guy is producing results.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @09:26PM
Trump was out of office when the selection was made.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 23 2021, @07:15AM
Elon Musk must be held responsible for killing turkeys that wander into the roadway in front of him.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Revek on Thursday September 23 2021, @01:16PM (3 children)
Lets face it Bezos has lost the billionaire space race. He doesn't even have the capability to reach orbit. He wants to be that guy but some other guy beat him to it and hasn't taken a trip yet. I figure when elon goes up he is going to the moon.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday September 23 2021, @02:03PM
Blue Organ needs to focus on getting it up to orbit before they criticize anyone else's plan using hardware that is under development and flying.
While they're at it, maybe they should also work on their BE-4 engines. Blue's inability to deliver the BE-4 could be the undoing of ULA. Nice way to take out a competitor.
Maybe Blue should not be focusing all its efforts on short several minute long sub orbital amusement joyrides for the super rich. Getting Bezos on the first joyride, while not being able to achieve orbit, and being way behind on the BE-4 engine, with New Shepard nowhere to be seen, and spending on lawyers to block competitors -- all of these put together just look bad.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @09:29PM (1 child)
Musk wants to go to Mars. Anything less is just a side show to him. Even if it means he's too old to go himself, if he can get a million people living there permanently he'll count that as a win.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday September 24 2021, @04:58PM
Too old? I imagine the low gravity would delight old joints. The roughest part would likely be the launch into Earth orbit, and John Glenn handled that just fine at age 77.
There might not be much of a toursim industry, but if there's so much as a stable research outpost I'm sure there'd be plenty to appeal to an aging space enthusiast on holiday.
I have my doubts that we'll see a million-strong city there within the century. Colonization has always been driven by exportable profits, and Mars just doesn't have any promise there. Unlike the asteroids which offer literal gold mines, or the Moon, which offers unlimited quantities of industrial raw materials conveniently close to Earth. But I imagine once space industry matures enough, the transportation and comfortable living costs will drop low enough to attract ambitious homesteaders who want to get off Earth, but prefer the benefit of ground beneath their feet.
Unfortunately for the near term, homesteaders are usually a pretty under-funded and strong-spriited lot, so they're unlikely to be able to afford the price to ship themselves and a "starter kit" to Mars any time soon. And are less likely to be interested in indentured servitude/debt-slavery to fund the journey, even if there were any reason for wealthy financiers to make the offer. Which is unlikely without a profitable export business nor any kind of "summer home" appeal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @01:17PM (5 children)
Not publishing a few numbers, names and addresses make sense, but why not publish the rest?
57 pages for that argument seems a bit like trying to win by talking louder.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 23 2021, @01:32PM (4 children)
Blue Origin would not want some parts published because it could cause embarrassment to Blue Origin and to Jeff Bezos. Better to keep it under cover of darkness.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 23 2021, @03:55PM (3 children)
It sure seems to me like all the redacted parts are the safety failures in the SpaceX proposal.
But it's NASA, it's not like they'd cover up known safety issues or anything!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 23 2021, @04:10PM (2 children)
So maybe SpaceX wanted it redacted?
Maybe Blue makes it sound like something is less safe just because SpaceX takes a faster "blow things up" approach during development when humans are not on board.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 23 2021, @04:13PM (1 child)
Yeah probably, I was mostly joking.
As of now those are all ALLEGGED safety failures and listing them on an official document like that could be prejudicial.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @09:32PM
Those systems are probably trade secrets and a fair bit will be covered by ITAR as well. Bezos isn't in this to win, he's just trying to cause as much damage to SpaceX as possible.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @10:32PM
The devil is always in the details with these things. SpaceX always does FRRs, they just don't want to be hamstrung by outdated* bureaucratic requirements. NASA procedure requires FRRs to be completed a minimum of two weeks before every launch, but SpaceX's tanker needs to be ready to fly again within at most 9 days due to scheduling constraints, and it may fly more than once per day if Mechzilla works out. NASA agreed that this would be a problem and came to a compromise: Each of the three Starships will get one full NASA FRR, and then as long as there are no problems SpaceX can use their faster procedure for additional tanker flights. This was deemed acceptable because the only safety consideration for tanker flights is range safety and no NASA hardware or personnel are involved at that stage, so any problems are SpaceX's problem. The only risk to NASA is to their schedule. As noted by the GAO, NASA's limited waiver should have been mentioned to the other applicants, but since none of them are using reusable launchers it doesn't apply to them, so no harm, no foul.
What never ceases to amaze me about this is that BO has the gall to complain that they weren't invited to break the law: Once the bids are in the price is final. Only the payment schedule can be changed. Had Leuders invited them to lower their bid, not only would she have been rightly fired for it but BO would have been banned from the HLS program like Boeing was.
There is a third accusation that has been redacted. There isn't enough context to identify what it is about, but considering BO's "creative" interpretations I don't give it any more credence than the rest.
*NASA procedures are built around Old Space cost plus contracts where any excuse for a delay or extra paperwork means more money in the contractor's pocket. There is no consideration for reuse, let alone rapid reuse.