Blue Origin Says: SpaceX’s Starship Lander Too Complex & Risky
In the wake of losing its protest over NASA’s decision to award the Human Landing System contract to SpaceX, Blue Origin has released an information graphic calling the Starship system “immensely complex & high risk.”
The comparison on the right shows the distance from the surface to the hatches of the two vehicles. The text from the infographic is reproduced below.
LUNAR STARSHIP: IMMENSELY COMPLEX & HIGH RISK
There are an unprecedented number of technologies, developments, and operations that have never been done before for Starship to land on the Moon. This includes developing Super Heavy – not only the largest launch vehicle stage ever produced, but one that has to be reusable – and Starship – the first ever reusable second stage. Then, the two systems must work together. A launch site in Boca Chica, Texas that has never conducted an orbital launch must demonstrate the ability to do so 7-11 times within 1-week increments. And cryogenic fluid transfer – a process that has also never been done – must work to refuel up to 100 MT of propellants from Starship to Starship that also requires development of a new tanker Starship variant. Finally, for just a single Starship lunar landing, this must all be done more than 10 times flawlessly. This is so that Starship can get to the surface and back with a single-stage ascent/descent vehicle, without dissimilar redundancy in abort engines.
NATIONAL TEAM: SAFE, LOW-RISK, FAST
The National Team’s architecture only requires three launches and is flexible to fly on multiple existing launch vehicles with far fewer in-space rendezvouses. Further, the system is entirely built on heritage systems and proven technologies that are flying today.
- FROM NASA SOURCE SELECTION STATEMENT: “While I find the positive aspects of SpaceX’s technical approach to be notably thoughtful and meritorious, these aspects are, however, tempered by its complexity and relatively high-risk nature… I acknowledge the immense complexity and heightened risk associated with the very high number of events necessary to execute the front end of SpaceX’s mission, and this complexity largely translates into increased risk of operational schedule delays.”
88 responses to “Blue Origin Says: SpaceX’s Starship Lander Too Complex & Risky”
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We choose to go to the moon because it’s hard. When JFK said that the unknowns were legion, but didn’t deter the technicians, scientists and engineers. What’s happened to Bezos?
Step by step – at a snail’s pace. He can’t deliver the BE4 when his partners at ULA need it. He keeps walking back the debut of New Glenn. He has no crew compartment in development (that he’s publicized) capable of orbital operations and now he wants to be a supplier of an oversized LEM that will only carry a couple of astronauts and leave half of its dry mass on the moon. At this point, all he’s produced is a reusable amusement park ride for rich people. As skeptical as I am of SpaceX, at least they’re making progress in a timely manner.
Not surprised.
Though sad.
10 launches for Lunar Starship if you believe Bezos. But they fail to tell you that Lunar Starship will transport and land 10 times the payload with one landing.
And do you think falling 32 ft vs 126 ft won’t kill you??? A lot better having an elevator from 126 ft vs a ladder at 32 ft.
The real metric is the cost per kilogram to the lunar surface. The other is that landing a 100 tons at a time means you are actually able to carry very useful cargo to the Moon, like a full size D10 class bulldozer, in one ready to use piece.
Of course you would have to convert it to run on electricity and send some solar panels to power it, if Elon Musk is able to find a company that would be able to do so…
Interesting question.
32 ft = 1/2 * ((5.33 ft/sec^2 * t^2), t=3.47 seconds
v = at = 5.33ft/sec^2 * 3.47 seconds = about 18.5 ft/second, or about 12.5 miles per hour.
I’m not sure a velocity of 12.5 miles per hour would kill you, at least if you were wearing your helmet. It’s the equivalent of falling 10’9″ on Earth, like falling off the roof with a helmet on.
Falling from 126 feet on the Moon, you’d hit the ground at 172 mph. I leave you to draw your own conclusion.
IIRC, Starship can put 80t on the lunar surface reusable, 200t if you leave it there.
A D10 comes in very close at 86 tons more or less. An D9 runs about 53 tons, but those are the Diesel engine Earth versions.
Something in between with a pressurized cabin would be able to really help in building a lunar base and starting lunar resource development on an economical scale. Big jobs require big equipment, something Elon Musk understands from working for his dad, an engineer, as a teen.
Could you recheck your calc on the 126 feet. I’m getting about 25 mph without a calculator. About 4 times the height gets about double the velocity.
Huh. When I did it just now I got 36.65 ft/sec, or 25 miles/hour. Well…you might live through that. 🙂
You fall 6.876 seconds, or about twice as long, ergo, twice as fast, like you said.
Thanks!
BO hasn’t been able to deliver a pair of engines to ULA yet, but wants to go to the Moon?!
Over the past 10 years SpaceX has accomplished amazing and real things while BO has done what? A funny cock-shaped elevator?
Come on!
Back In 2002 Musk gave Bezos some advice and tried to show him that he had taken the wrong development approach at BO, but Bezos didn’t listen to Musk.
Now, 20 years later, look who’s delivering and who’s complaining.
Bezos proves to be an arrogant person, extremely proud and, perhaps, cheating… read this:
https://arstechnica.com/sci…
I would make three points
First I am curious who Jeff thinks his audience is with this? the GAO has made its call, NASA has made its choice, its unlikely that he has enough friends in congress to simply push all that aside
Second he is on some level correct. but that level is determined by time frame. by 2024 its unlikely to me that Musk will have demonstrated the technonlogies and operations necessary to make a lunar starship. AND I think that the lunar starship thing is going to require a level of maturity in operations that might (MIGHT) take a decade to reach…but I dont think any one cares since a landing by 24 is unlikely
third…Bezos has in fact not demonstrated a level of maturity of technical development necessary just for his effort so…
Who are Bezos’s audience? I say collectors. A mint copy of this puppy should appreciate by at least 10x in as little as three years. An autographed copy could pay for a year at Harvard.
Why so valuable so soon? Because Bezos is not correct. Not even close. In the next 18 months, SpaceX will have put paid to nearly all the “risks” on Bezos’s laundry list while he and his may well be spending most of their time defending lawsuits brought by ULA.
the first graph…I suspect its value is low
the second graph…3 years more likely 5
1st graf – maybe. I was being hyperbolic. A lot of stuff isn’t worth very much. Interestingly, loser and winner Presidential memorabilia seem to carry similar pricetags.
2nd graf – no. But I won’t make any effort to persuade you. I’ll just let the passage of time – and not all that much of it – take care of that.
I let history be my guide
5 and Musk has done a great job
I don’t think you do. You seem to think, for no discernable reason, that it will take another decade or more to get Starship into “operational” status. The history of SpaceX is that it has never taken anywhere near a decade to do anything it decided was essential that the company do.
I looked on the infographic, but I can’t find the grapes. The sour grapes.
They’re in the basement of one of Bezos’s mansions. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
Ow!
Ha! good one
If it makes that much sense then BO shouldn’t have much trouble finding customers once they starting offering a lunar delivery service.
There was even more unproven technology on the Saturn V… We can´t get stuck in old technology, we have to try something new!
I don’t believe that’s actually true, even if you actually mean Apollo.
I don’t know about greater risk, but I don’t think they’re in a position to talk about relative complexity…
I want a copy of this poster. It’ll look great next to my Confederate $5 bill, my 1,000 Reichsmark war bond and my Dukakis for President bumper sticker.
Ahh…Michael Dukakis…the John Wayne of the Democrat Party. Come back, Michael…your party needs you.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
That was when his campaign tanked.
Well said.
Even at nearly a decade older he’s probably still sharper than Root Vegetable Joe.
Funny thing is that Dukakis lost because he looked like a dressed-up little boy in comparison to grownup GHWB, coming off eight years of Ronald Reagan, who essentially ran as an honorable man’s B-actor in the mold of John Wayne (or Ike).
Years later, Republicans turned out to vote for the ultimate polar opposite of Bush, or Reagan, or John Wayne, a cowardly lifetime grifter with not even a pretense of honor who paid a doctor to certify he had bone spurs, never pays his debts, notoriously cheats at golf, likes his meat well-done and has never so much as brewed his own cup of coffee, who boasted of all the women he’d screwed without any birth control, the implication being that he paid for a lot of abortions. Or didn’t.
What a turnaround for the GOP. From Dwight D. Eisenhower to worshipping the Unrepentant Sinner.
Half the reason Trump won the GOP Primary in 2016 was because the Democratic leaning press did all that they could to make that outcome happen. It was an amazingly transparent con. Trump was the candidate the Democrats preferred to run against in 2016, and they got their wish.
Too bad for the nation that the Democrats have become such a poisonous party that the best alternative to letting Hillary become President was voting for Trump.
Well, you guys are loyal to Trump, I’ll give you that.
But I’ll stand by my point. He’s the antithesis of everything the GOP used to believe in.
Sadly the demagoguery, the extremism and the illegal actions of Angry Joe Dementia are fully in step with the evolution of the Democratic Party.
Devolution, I think you mean.
No, he’s not.
And, if one seeks something that has abandoned nearly everything it used to stand for, try the Democratic Party. It hates white people, cops, blue collar workers, non-criminal gun owners and anyone who still believes in freedom of expression and meritocracy without regard to race. After allowing for overlaps, that’s at least 90% of the country. The Democrats are coming to resemble one of those comically exclusionary Christian sects in which, “No one is righteous but me and thee – and I’m beginning to have my doubts about thee.”
Dukakis lost because he provided a bloodless, academic and wimpy answer to a question from an interviewer about what he’d do if his wife was raped. The silly tank picture didn’t help. It wasn’t because he looked like a boy compared to GHWB – heck, the man had eyebrows and a five-o’clock shadow to rival Nixon’s – it was because he was obviously pretending in trying to look military.
Democrats lost any standing to criticize Trump’s personal and business ethics, courage or treatment of women after electing Bill Clinton twice.
I like my meat well-done. If you have a problem with that, contact my seconds.
I think a lot of Republicans finally decided to get their own SOB after so many years of being jackrolled by Democratic SOBs. It largely worked. The odds look increasingly good Trump will have a second term if he wants it.
If you have a problem with Bill Clinton but don’t have a problem with Trump…ah, yes, I see. Further down you hung up your moral indignation and provided a frank answer. You didn’t have a problem with Clinton. You had a problem with him not being your guy.
Cooking a good steak until it’s well-done should be punished by incarceration.
Cooking a good steak until it’s well-done should be punished by incarceration.
Here’s where we have a problem. I think calling for incarceration of those with different tastes should be explained with a club. I can’t stand Chinese food, and it’s none of my business if other people love it. I like my steaks medium well, and if you like yours rare or raw, have at it.
Interesting. As the saying goes, there’s no accounting for tastes.
I, personally, am of the opinion that the two genuinely great culinary cultures on Earth are the Chinese and the Italian ones – the latter being, in essence, a star pupil that has equalled its older mentor.
Now Japanese “food,” on the other hand, never seems to rise above the level of offal of many vile types, each worse than the last. A former colleague of mine once described the entire “cuisine” as “squid livers and lizard hearts.” Seeing what the Japanese regard as fit for human consumption provides, in my view, some real insight into why there was a Bataan Death March.
The main difference between Clinton and Trump is that Clinton actually harassed and assaulted women. Trump indulged in locker room braggadocio – sometimes in places that weren’t locker rooms.
Democrats and other lefties have this notion that speech defines reality – probably because so many of them are lawyers. Clinton never admitted to anything he did so it didn’t happen. Trump bragged about doing things he never did so he’s obviously guilty.
About steak. I almost never eat the stuff precisely because almost no one knows how to cook it properly and still leave it edible. And none of the few people I know who can do that are in CA. So my beef consumption, though considerable, is of either the ground variety or pot roast made in a slow-cooker. Semi-cooked meat is simply grotesque.
I think a lot of Republicans finally decided to get their own SOB after so many years of being jackrolled by Democratic SOBs
close but no cigar 🙂
what Trump was able (and still does) to do was weaponize the base of the GOP which has been pandered to by politicians since Nixon but never really embraced…Trump figured out that he could go to the anti science, anti women, anti black anti mexican, anti anything but white stupid and then steam roller the rest of the GOP with their numbers
it worked barely in 16. it didnt work in 20
trump is several magnitudes above either clinton in his ability to lie and thats OK with about 30 percent of the country. they are use to being lied to…its what they want
Yes, that’s the DNC catechism. The Democrats, being the party of coastal urban self-designated “elites,” looks upon the proles in”Flyover Country” as rubes and yokels. The fact is, much of the Republican establishment does too. That was why Trump was so hated by both. He wasn’t “anti-science, anti-woman, anti-black, or anti-Mexican” – illegal immigrant Mexicans excepted. He was anti-self-styled nose-in-the-air elites. The self-immolation of the “Never Trumpers” was just the Manhattan Right making common cause with the Manhattan Left against this crude parvenu from… Queens.
Far from being a racist, Trump was coming dangerously close to peeling away enough black, Latino and Asian voters to render the Democratic Party non-viable nationally. Trying to stem that tide by ginning up baseless calumnies about whites, cops and white cops was what the whole BLM and canonization of dead career criminals, starting with George Floyd, was about last year. When the “side effects” of that effort failed to sufficiently move the needle, the big-city Democratic machines simply invented about 10 million votes out of whole cloth in the wee hours of Nov. 4. Now we’re supposed to believe that a man whose staffers usually outnumbered attendees at his “rallies” beat someone who could easily fill stadiums by racking up a vote total well above that managed by Barack Obama? Bridge. Brooklyn. Sale.
All of these points are valid, however Space X is actually working all these issues with real hardware right now. Bezos in the same time frame has been spending thousands of millions of his own money telling his work staff to take their sweet time. According to an article in Ars Technica they have. According that that article a grand total of 4 BE4 engines have been built and tested since 2014. Raptor is where in the process? 100+ units built and tested? Yes The National Team has less fundamental new techniques and systems to build, but at the rate they’re closing them out, SpaceX will have retired its list of fundamental developments and will be working on improvements. Bezos is not telling a lie in fact, he’s telling an implied lie. He’s saying that given Space X’s longer list than his list, Space X needs more time and money to work that longer list. History shows that’s not true, and if it’s true in part, Space X can close the gap anyway so long as time is a free parameter.
As for anyone going to the Moon soon. Show me the EVA suit, toilet, and food solutions, and I’ll start believing it.
Again I am not sure what JEff’s audience is. I guess/think what he could be counting on is a you know BIG RUD in this coming SpaceX test…and then say “see we would be safer”
that might have some traction, but I suspect by the time SpacX flies or blows up or does whatever this year (late Sept) that the budget thing is already done
and besides it doesnt matter…no one is rushing to the moon
WHAT is going to happen is that they are going to build the Gateway…and the time frame is somewhere in the next term with maybe 1 launch this term
at that point what the Gateway is going to become is a fuel hub. there is no other method possible since we dont have a SaturnV
time is a free parameter to a point
The Super heavy is on the pad and they are just waiting for the winds to calm down to add SN-20 on top. If the FAA AST gets their paper work in order it could fly next week. They are indeed moving at warp speed.
they are and thats impressive but they are going to have some rud’s…look most of their flight testing so far is ruds…and I am not for sure that they can replicate consistently SN15’s success but lets see
They’re banking on RUDS, but BN5 and SN21 are both already close to stacking.
By the time BN4/SN20 flies, its replacement will be fairly far along or finished. The GSE tanks are all nearly finished, and the new High Bay will begin construction soon. The former oil platforms are also nearly ready to be towed over to Boca Chica so they can receive towers.
they should…a lot of it is going to depend on how far they get on this upcoming flight. a RUD on the pad would be less I think that they have a good chance getting to second stage burn..
The most RUD-prone stuff is already behind SpaceX, namely the flip-and-land maneuver. There simply isn’t anything new ahead of it that demands anything of Super Heavy or Starship anywhere near as dynamically “adventurous” than that.
It can’t fly next week, or so I understand it. There are comment periods to get through, by law.
https://www.courthousenews….
And I don’t think it could fly next week anyway. They have a lot of work to do, including pulling all the engines off, doing pressure checks and structural tests and cold flow tests, then putting the engines back on and doing more cold flow tests and static fires.
But they could surprise me.
Plus adding all the missing heat-shield tiles!
SLS delenda est
All but done. Go take a look at the 24-hour NASASpaceflight livestream. S20 is going to be wearing a well-tailored tuxedo by the time it gets lifted and stacked tomorrow morning.
That seems to be mostly a matter of supply. There weren’t enough to cover everything, but more of the standard hexagons came in from the main “bakery” in FL and were added. It takes longer to make the special shapes so those may be added, piecemeal, while the other tests are going on.
Probably more like the week after, unless there is already enough GSE
tankage done to support an initial full-stack flight test and the launch
support tower and the rest of the orbital launch complex has enough of
its interior fitments squared away.
At recent rates of progress, the time of at least minimal readiness is rapidly drawing nigh. 12 hours from now – winds permitting – S20 should be perched securely atop B4 and looking very spiffy.
That brings up another issue, the pressure testing of all the GSE. I don’t remember seeing any of that yet, but maybe it happened and I was just focused on different shiny things. At the least there’s one more tank to check.
More than one. The 2nd-to-last GSE tank is nearing completion. The last one shouldn’t take long after that. All but one of the cryoshells is now done too.
Blue Origin et al is rebranding themselves as America’s National Team and SpaceX as The Big Risk. The audience is Congress.
This is good business, but SpaceX is going to be getting a lot of free publicity when SN21 gets fit-checked in the next day or two. A picture is worth a thousand press releases.
Yes, Congress is the the target for that material because only a moron would be the intended target of that material.
do you think it will be effective? I dont
According to that article, it’s 9 BE-4s, IIRC. Bezos has not ever told his work staff to “take their sweet time.” Bezos is not telling a lie or implying anything. Blue Origin is stating, quite truthfully, that the SpaceX technical risk for a Starship HLS is higher.
Sorry, but some folks might not realize you’re speaking in hyperbole.
All of that said, SpaceX works 168-hour work weeks, everybody else in the US works 40-hour work weeks. That means SpaceX works (at least) 4.2X faster than their US competitors. If SpaceX says they’ll get a Starship on the lunar surface in 2022, that gives them 4.2 * 17 months, in standard aerospace time, to work the kinks out, or nearly the equivalent of 71 months.
If Generic Aerospace Contractor X was fully funded and motivated to finish (and not Boeiing), could they complete Starship in five years of 40-hour work weeks? Doubtful, and that’s Blue Origin’s point. But SpaceX has won themselves a measure of unusual credibility, which is Kathy Lueders’ point.
Until Blue proves otherwise, they don’t deserve to be given that credibility. Draper, Dynetics and LockMart sure as hell don’t, given their track records. But I don’t blame them for fighting for contracts. Anything else would be business malpractice.
EDIT: 71 months ain’t 5 years. It’s 6.
I stand corrected, 9 not 4. Big difference right? I fly with people who work/worked at Space X. The crazy hours are not all the time. But yes they work an accelerated schedule, and have been taken to court and lost for what they ask of their employees. You know, in the sciences we work those kinds of hours for free more than we’d like to admit to ourselves. I’m watching for a few things to come out of Space X that have not yet. Employees who are crowded out by company policy going off on their own to spawn new enterprises along the lines of the defections from Fairchild to found companies like Intel. And the dreamers who realize no matter how hard they peck at the problem of colonizing Mars and no matter how successful they are, they’re a long way’s off from going to Mars themselves and living there. I’m looking forward to their insights on the journey they’ve been on.
Spacex engineers work long hours, but the blue collar types at Starbase work alternating weeks of 36 and 48 hours (three 12-hour days one week and four 12-hour days the next) and there are four shift groups. So voronwae is right – SpaceX, as a company, works 168-hour weeks.
SpaceX has been sued numerous times by disgruntled ex-employees. The only suit I can ever recall that it settled was a class-action thing a few years ago about an alleged violation of a CA anti-large-layoff law. It was one of those nobody-wins-a-lawsuit-but-the-lawyers things where the law firm got almost $2 million and their “clients” got about 100 bucks apiece.
The former SpaceX-ers who have gone off to start other companies are numerous and many have been quite successful. With a few notable exceptions, these partings have generally been amicable. The majority of ex-SpaceX-ers seem to be engineers who have left and found other lucrative and satisfying employment that left them more time for a family life. These partings also seem to be mostly amicable. A fair number of the early-days Falcon 1 hands have since moved on. Astra, Relativity and other newer NewSpace companies have eagerly picked them up. Eric Berger profiles quite a few of them in his book Liftoff. You should read it.
w. It was one of those nobody-wins-a-lawsuit-but-the-lawyers things where the law firm got almost $2 million and their “clients” got about 100 bucks apiece.
thats not true
Yeah, it is.
It is like Apollo in that respect. It ain’t for wimps
I am always fascinated by the degree to which lefties seem to regard hard work, voluntarily undertaken, as constituting some kind of human rights violation. The Maynard G. Krebs-ization of America.
I work two jobs, and I get called a softy here:) Worked steady since 1988. Very proud of that
And the dreamers who realize no matter how hard they peck at the problem of colonizing Mars and no matter how successful they are, they’re a long way’s off from going to Mars themselves and living there. I’m looking forward to their insights on the journey they’ve been on
that should be a fun book or two or episode on the angry astronaut
1. first while I think that Musk will make Starship work, he will be to the end of the decade making it happen…but it will be fun seeing how many “upper stage” designs are built…some of which will never come back to earth…
2. Mars is not going to happen in the next 20 years, not with the current starship designs…and the Moon is probably only going to start to happen sometime after 28 or so…but the gateway will go…and I think that Starship will have started to change the launch equation by then
3. it will all be fun to watch. I think that these are fascinating times in spaceflight
Robert, Are you using quote characters or the blockquote markup around the quote in your reply ? Nothing shows up in my browser. If not, could you please ? Double quote chars seem to work, and italics.
I dont think so…sorry I am just clicking reply and typing
ANYONE…what am I doing wrong?
You seem to be cutting and pasting, like
I dont think so…sorry I am just clicking reply and typing
with no indication it is a quote, instead of
“I dont think so…sorry I am just clicking reply and typing”
or even “I dont think so…sorry I am just clicking reply and typing”
so we can more easily see what you are quoting.
sorry I get it now thanks
Lord, this is going to look silly in a couple of years.
Dynetics never had any real wins…not enough money
Well, by keeping the engineers free of the suits for Jarvis, he is doing an end run around the deadwood. But is it too late?
I want Alpaca for the back-up, even if has to be shorn for weight
Sounds like sour grapes as usual. I tend to prefer any system that doesn’t leave half of its dry mass at the landing site and can hold more than two people. That said, Musk’s BFR should be able to send a fully-fueled Starship to the moon where it should be able to land, take off again and make it’s way back to Earth without refueling. It obviously can’t do it with 100 people but would hopefully be capable with a crew of 5 or 6, the rest taken up by equipment and fuel. Ready by 2024? Not a chance. 2028? Possibly. If it requires mid-flight refueling? I’m glad I got to see it the first time in the 60’s and 70’s.
You are a man of very very little faith. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Very true. 🙂
I don’t believe Starship is a slam dunk for operational status in three or four years. It might or might not, I’ll wait and see as I have no skin in the game. However Bezos needs to STFU unless he can deliver something. If Blue has 1/4 of the technical hurdles but moves 1/10th of the development speed, that’s spelled loser.
A tenth of a second slow can be the difference between a touchdown and an incomplete. Jeff better find a boatload of tenths if he wants to stay n the game. Bitching at the referees doesn’t reverse the fumble.
I think SpaceX is focused on China as their competition. I would think Bezos would be thinking about it, but I doubt Smith has given Chinese commercial space even a moment’s thought.
I doubt it. China is no real competition for SpaceX now. And China loses more ground to SpaceX every year. I don’t think China figures in Elon’s thinking about SpaceX at all. Tesla is another matter.
You’re probably right about Smith. He doesn’t seem too interested even in U.S. commercial space, just government contracts.
The operational status thing is off, but everything else is pretty much spot-on.
I wonder what proven systems the diagram is referring to. SLS hasn’t flown,New Glenn hasn’t flown and the new Be-4 engines for ULA aren’t ready yet.
Falcon Heavy!
SLS delenda est
Heh.
The numbers are a bit on the pessimistic side, it might take as few as 7 tanker launches for SpaceX HLS, but otherwise the Blue Origin critique is accurate. The SpaceX HLS is higher risk.
However, the most important context was left out of the Blue Origin critique, the context of price. The Blue Origin HLS costs NASA at least twice as much as the SpaceX HLS, for a single lunar landing mission.
Unless Blue Origin reduces their price to something similar to what SpaceX is charging NASA, Blue Origin better get used to self-financing any trips to the Moon!
SLS delenda est
“…like a full size D10 class bulldozer…”
I’m sure you realize this, but it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than just coverting a D10 to electricity to get it converted to work on the Moon. Way, way more.
Spacex is creating a new system not for just one mission but for several hundred afterwards. BO is making a expensive one shot solution for a small mission where their lander doesn’t even meet mission requirements