Blue Origin Sues in Federal Court Over Human Landing System Contract Loss
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has filed a lawsuit over its failure to win a NASA Human Landing System to return astronauts to the lunar surface. The lawsuit follows the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) rejection last month of its appeal of the space agency’s decision to award a single contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Reuters reports:
Blue Origin said its lawsuit filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on Friday is “an attempt to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASA’s Human Landing System.”
It added it believes “the issues identified in this procurement and its outcomes must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition, and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America.”
Blue Origin’s lawsuit remains under seal. NASA must file a response to the challenge by Oct. 12.
Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics have argued that NASA was required to make multiple awards. The GAO said it “denied the protest arguments that NASA acted improperly in making a single award to SpaceX.”
The appeal will likely further delay SpaceX’s development of its lander, which is based on the company’s Starship vehicle.
72 responses to “Blue Origin Sues in Federal Court Over Human Landing System Contract Loss”
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NASA and SpaceX need to separately, or jointly, petition for an expedited review and for a summary dismissal with prejudice. If this lawsuit can actually halt NASA-SpaceX cooperation on HLS again, it’s the equivalent of hostage-taking via lawsuit and needs to be slapped down and hard. Counter-suits also need to be brought.
it will go nowhere
I agree. But it might do some significant damage while it’s still running loose.
I dont think it will
Hopefully not
I doubt the judge will even require nasa to suspend work , they usually never do
Unfortunately, he did. Fortunately, the period of work stoppage is supposed to be capped at 74 days. The 95-day “stoppage” engendered by the GAO protests doesn’t appear to have had any effect. I suspect the same will prove true of this new 74-day “stoppage.” The judge, at least, does not seem inclined to let this case turn into a perpetual motion machine.
I hope you’re right. If there’s no stop-work order that results from this suit, then it will have no practical consequence other than greatly diminishing Blue Origin’s already quite problematical reputation. And it will render even more mysterious the reasons Bezos decided to bring this suit in the first place.
Update 8-17: Re: those mysterious Bezos motivations.
Have subsequently read Eric Berger’s piece about this in Ars Technica. He claims Bezos is of the opinion that it was his lobbying and tub-thumping that got the HLS program going in the first place – hence his galloping sense of entitlement. This is about like someone noticing that the sun always rises as he awakens in the morning and comes to the conclusion that the former occurs because of the latter.
I think it is safe to say that the last person Donald Trump or anyone in his administration would take unsolicited advice from is Jeff Bezos. The two were implacable political foes.
There having been no Moon program during the eight years of Obama, it was, perforce, ginned up from scratch except for SLS-Orion. The last NASA Moon lander project then being 6+ years in its grave, a new lander project was the centerpiece need of the Trump-Pence-Bridenstine Moon program that would come to be dubbed Artemis. That Trump’s arch-enemy Bezos also wanted a Moon lander program for reasons of his own did not figure in the calculations of Artemis’s architects at all.
So it seems Bezos stands revealed as a narcissist of trans-Trump-ian proportions and as being delusional as well. It also seems our Andy T. is far from alone in having a seriously defective grasp of reality.
interesting but I have to go to bed…tomorrow
I reread Berger’s piece… I wonder what Jeff thought was NASA’s prime consideration 🙂
if the rest of it is accurate…well the nice part about being rich is that everyone poorer then you agrees with you 🙂
Well, the design of the National Team lander suggests that slavish adherence to the “reference architecture” was likely a factor. Anent space, Bezos has always seemed to place “working the system” a lot higher up his list of priorities than does Elon Musk.
Saintly father says that the courts will act by Nov 1 and that is why NASA has put in a stop order until then.
I generally agree with your comments. I think Bezos and the gang looked at Apollo on Steroird kind of thinking divided it up on three launchers and launchs and moved on 🙂
You actually have to have grounds to counter sue and the suit itself needs to be pretty egregious to rate dismissal with prejudice to refile. More likely Bezos loses in the summary judgment phase. Of course, he could take a page out of you-know-who’s playbook and keep filing baseless suits until all of his lawyers get disbarred for multiple violations of FRCP 11.
Counter-suits would only be indicated if this suit results in a stop-work order and then fails to prevail. In that case, there would be actual damages to SpaceX and, arguably, to NASA.
Bezos doesn’t have to worry about his lawyers being disbarred – he’s a Democrat.
the Federal courts just dont override the GAO unless there is some fundamental error in the process the GAO use
The “Sorest Loser Of The Year” award goes to, that’s right, that person with way too many dollars and nowhere near enough sense. 🙂
and when this doesnt work…whats next? 🙂 fly safe
That is the $2 billion dollar question.
Bezos might wonder off by himself but I dont see the rest of the national team following him. they dont do things like this…what they are looking for is well a secure government contract
I have no idea what he tries next…a suggestion. make NG fly 🙂
Good suggestion.
I guess, Bob, there will always be one more dummy that can be spat. 🙂 Stay safe, Paul.
LOL yeah
He gave his “Going to Space to Benefit Earth” speech back in May, ’19. That Blue Moon lunar lander looked pretty cool. Turns out he’s better at talking and suing than building. He’s got enough money to produce space hardware, so where’s the rocket? Sore loser is right. My respect for the man has taken a 180.
We all thought he was going to help pave our highway to the stars. Turns out, he was installing speed bumps.
Heh
So the second string, substitute relief pitcher in training is criticizing the manager for using the star player in a critical game. I would say go back to the minors, but of course they never left.
and we wonder why Bezos is having ahard time getting to orbit 🙂
fly safe
Just thinking about this as I did the afternoon peddle in the driving rain (is that a song somewhere?)
If Bezos was going to go somewhere with this…the one avenue that “I” think he might get some traction in the world of decision making is to attack the entire effort …and get some of his friends who have Senator in front of their name to lead the bell ringing.
the lunar program is really in almost complete dissarary…and its unclear where its barreling to
aside from SLS and Orion running constantly behind time…its pretty clear that SpaceX is not going to be ready in 24 to fly to the moon (I know the fans dont like that but lets be real) …its unclear that space suits exist or anything else associated with the moon, like surface instruments.
the only thing that seems to be on track is the gateway but really its running 25, 26 something like that at best.
there is some peril in this. BO is no where with Vulcan or NG>..but still …
it strikes me that this is the only way that Bezos can get some publicity
Bob, we will know in a few months if SpaceX will make the 2024 date.
The SX Moon surface EVA suits will probably be ready by 2024 if the Lunar Starship is in service by 2023. IIRC SX need to land an uncrewed HLS lander before doing so with astronauts.
maybe…(and I think that they will get “something” to work as I noted in my Space Review piece) …but I think its going to be longer then that. really they have had a lot of RUD’s and two or so “barely success”..
I dont think that they have a final configuration yet…and I am pretty sure they dont have one for the lunar thing…
but as you say lets see how the test flight goes…I am eager
Bob, the Falcon freakin’ 9 doesn’t have a “final configuration.” Your Boeing is showing.
its at a workable configuration…it will take sometime to get Starship to that…there is probably going to be a stage zero. you can see that coming in my view
Just to possibly clear up a point as I read a similar comment of yours elsewhere recently about Musk mentioning a “stage zero”.
Musk was referring to that he considers the ground systems (launch mount, service tower/Mechazilla, fueling infrastructure, etc.) to be “stage zero”, meaning, the ground systems are as critical to successful flight of a payload to orbit as SH (the first stage ) and Starship (the 2nd stage) themselves — but, harder to manufacture and thus less replaceable since there’s no production line for stage zero
“Stage 0” was Elon’s metaphor for the non-flying ground support infrastructure in his conversation-while-walking with Tim Dodd. He was
not referring to an additional, previously undisclosed, part of the rocket stack. His use of the term “stage 0” was in the context of parts of the rocket that can be removed and their functions transferred to the GSE. The recently revised propellant loading arrangements for Starship and the catching of the boosters – and perhaps the Starships as well – by arms mounted to the launch support tower so as to obviate the need for landing legs were two examples of mass removed from stage 1 and stage 2 because of additions to “stage 0.”
I know you’ve been informed of your error of interpretation on this
point at least once before so do yourself a favor and don’t persist in
it. It makes you look dumb.
the two of you are 4 hours apart. its been about 12 hours since I checked the boards…
I have not watched the video 🙂 so I’ll go with your statement (or therealdmt’s one) but lets see what the configuration turns out to be 🙂
Good videos…1-2-3. Well worth your time. I’d love to get your take on them. And you could turn them into an interesting opinion piece.
Bezos has already tried to work his political trained seals. He whiffed. If they didn’t/couldn’t help him before this idiotic suit, they’re sure as shooting not going to be able to do any better now that he has filed it.
The lunar program is not in “disarray” except for those elements of it Bridenstine was not able, or didn’t have sufficient time, to fix. That includes SLS-Orion and the EVA suits. The suits were at least put on a path to competitive commercial procurement under Bridenstine. The recent NASA IG report has added impetus to this initiative. As with a growing number of things connected to Artemis, SpaceX will likely be the entity that comes through first. It may well work out that that winds up being the case for any yet-to-be-found SLS-Orion deficiencies that would otherwise delay the program as well.
You are one of the dwindling few to whom it is “pretty clear that SpaceX is not going to be ready in 24 to fly to the Moon.” Let us, by all means, “be real.” It took SpaceX six months and five tries to stick the Starship landing flip. Next up is full-stack ascent to orbit and Earth-return EDL. I don’t think that’s going to take five tries and six months, but let’s say it does. That’s another major milestone notched up by, say, Feb. 22. After that, it’s tankers, a depot ship and orbital refilling. Again, I don’t see proving those out as taking six months and five tries, but say it does. We’re now at Aug. 22. That leaves the only major item on the to-do list being the lander itself. Even if that takes a whole year and 10 tries, it’s done two years hence. Can we send a crew to the Moon in 2024? Sure. Do we need SLS-Orion to do it? We do not.
It’s not “pretty clear” to me that SpaceX will absolutely land people on the moon by 2024. I would say possible, but not certain. In my business having back up plans is very useful for when things don’t go right. I don’t see a good alternative available for 2024 if there are major problems or delays with Starship. I don’t know which delays might come into play except to note that 30+ Raptors are lost on every failed attempt.
I personally think going properly, that is safely and affordably, is more important than a year or two slip. 2024 is a nice to have, while 203? as in certain other architectures is lousy. As long as there is a good momentum going forward based on hardware results, I’d say relax and enjoy the show. I prefer the thought of constant landings starting in 2026 to a single in 2024 with months/years gaps from then on.
But destroying 30 engines at a time allows you to improve them faster than destroying three at a time.
In order to create one must to destroy.
The more data available to be analyzed the easier and faster it is to identify failures and iterate.
I don’t agree that destruction is required for creating. That assumes that there is no possible use for or lessons to be learned from recovered hardware. Your point is totally valid only in an organization that refuses to set aside underperforming hardware, techniques, and people.
You seem to have internalized the essence of the hyper-cautious, failure-phobic engineering culture that has all but killed real progress in U.S. aerospace these past 40 years and hasn’t even eliminated failure for all that. The willingness of SpaceX to countenance a fair amount of destruction if it moves the ball forward smartly is one of the main reasons it can advance so fast compared to its putative competition.
Nothing is certain. The Chinese could start a nuclear war over Taiwan tomorrow and much of the world could be dead by 2024. In the absence of
utter certainty, then, one must do one’s rational best to assess probabilities.
My argument is based on the fact that SpaceX makes rapid progress not only despite sometimes making messes along the way, but often because it does so. Said messes, then, do not constitute delays to Starship when stacked up against the hyper-cautious, but increasingly dysfunctional, development practices that have become normative in U.S. legacy aerospace over the past four decades.
“30 Raptors” are not lost in every failed attempt. The failed attempts to-date have cost three Raptors each. The 80 or so Raptors currently in-hand are not the version 2 that will be mass produced at the new McGregor plant anyway. So if they are sacrificed in tests, no long-term harm accrues.
But the only failures that would wreck 30 or more Raptors at a whack would be those involving failed Super Heavies. Given that no Raptor lit on the ground and run continuously has ever failed explosively, I find fears of Super Heavy explosions seriously overblown. The first Super Heavy to fly will be sacrificed in the sea to establish its landing accuracy. But perhaps by as soon as the second such test flight, the Mechazilla attachment to the launch support tower will be grabbing returning Super Heavies out of the air.
The thing about Raptors, in any case, is that they are cheap to build and will be getting cheaper still. Musk seems confident that his target cost of $1,000/tonne of thrust target can be met fairly soon at McGregor. That would put a Raptor’s sticker price at $230,000 per unit. Even the prototype units that have been turned out at Hawthorne likely don’t cost more than twice that. The ship prototypes these engines power are far cheaper per unit of mass than their engines.
SpaceX has been going safely. It makes safe messes. As noted already, it also does its testing affordably. Super Heavy and Starship hulls are not SLS core stages or Space Shuttle orbiters. Raptors are not F-1s or SSMEs or RS-168s or even RD-180s in terms of unit cost.
It is the forced march toward maturity of manufacturing and of function that comes from frequent tests run without any fear of failure that will assure continued, frequent operations after the first demo flights of HLS Starship to the Moon.
There will be 30+ engines on Superheavy flights. Any of the ships that fail to be recovered for any reason lose many engines. Doesn’t require an explosion, just any of the variables that prevent recovery. There is a massive difference between allowing for failures and the unexpected that requires a different approach. Composite tanks, netting fairing halves, parachute F9 recovery, Falcon1, and other things had to be tried to learn they weren’t right for the job. You see a superb company doing an excellent development effort that can’t be stopped. I see a superb company developing several new things that could fail at some point. That one failure point could screw up the timetable something awful without actually stopping them later.
That gotcha could be anywhere from the EIS at Boca to unexpected orbital fueling issues to many things not thought of. Moving fast is good, depending on fast success is risky, as in go-fever. It’s not binary between SpaceX and Oldspace,. It’s multifaceted. The with me or against me approach misses a lot of nuances.
Edit a minute later. Responding to the first sentence in your reply. You seem to have internalized that Elon is an unstoppable force. That seems true for now. I am willing to bet that Starship/Superheavy is not in fully operational service by 1 January 2024. Steak dinner bet??
You are a throwback to the coast-hugging mariners of the pre-Columbian era whose maps were liberally inscribed with the legend “Here Be Monsters.” You offer utterly no case for there being any real reason to expect future Super Heavy failures. But even should there be such, as already noted, the cost of a completely lunched set of 30 Super Heavy Raptors is currently no more than about $15 million and, in the near future, will be less than half of that. These aren’t SLS core stages or 777s we’re talking about here.
Encountering unexpected problems – and promptly grinding them into powder – is something of a SpaceX specialty. It has done this many times. If it must do so many more times, it will. You continue trying to force SpaceX into your familiar OldSpace mold of massive delay when something not anticipated in advance happens and everyone involved has to promptly adjourn to the laundry room to wash their underwear.
Thus far, Elon has been an unstoppable force. Why you would bet against that continuing to be true is, frankly, beyond me.
I’ll happily bet you dinner on Starship’s readiness to serve. But not steak – I hardly ever touch the stuff.
Good quality dinner bet then, done. Can we agree that operational means Superheavy hulls and Starship hulls are being reused for customers?? Or if in house only that both hull types have demonstrated turnarounds of less than a month??
Most of us here agree that the vehicles can be made to work, and probably will be made to work. The disconnect is on timeline and potential issues. I see no reason to play whack-a-mole with you by naming issues that you reflexively dismiss. You have plenty of sparring partners here already.
You may want to ease up on name calling. From where I sit you seem to be drifting into yourself against the world. Alienating people that are in agreement on most of the major issues doesn’t help your cause.
Done on the conditions of the bet.
If I get a tad cranky at times on the issue of timelines it’s because I simply see no rational basis upon which to rest the notion that SpaceX is years and years away from any sort of operational Starship. And no one who so argues seems inclined to provide any specific basis for this belief – certainly not RGO and Tubbiolo. Given both what SpaceX has done on previous programs and what it has done to-date on Starship, the idea that we’re still the larger part of a decade – or more – away from routinely operational Starships just strikes me, very sincerely, as barmy. Your mileage obviously differs but I’m still damned if I can see why.
As for alienating people, I’ve been doing that by virtue of being right much of my life. It has cost me at times. But alienation is always a choice, and one that many people seem to make for trivial reasons. Today’s cancel culture is pretty much the alienation equivalent of Ebola or some fast-metastasizing cancer. I call them as I see them and have often up-voted a comment by someone I just got finished flaying for some other comment. My God, I’ve even up-voted Gary Church a few times! And I sleep very well.
Its not pretty clear to me that SpaceX can do a lunar fly by in 24 much less a lunar landing. they have “stuck” the landing flip exactly once and that was a near thing…and in reality that was a pretty minor thing…in the list of things to do…
and if it takes 6 tries to get the first and second stage back to earth, that will be well at the end of 22 or maybe 23…
and I am not telling you that they cannot do it…I think that they eventually will
but 1) its unclear to me when and 2) its unclear to me at least what the entire thing “looks like” when it roars off with its first paying customer
can we send people to the Moon in 24? yes. they would ride on a Falcon heavy
Based on the number of failures preceding the first success, the Starship landing flip was roughly on a par with the vertical landing of an F9 1st stage on a drone ship in terms of difficulty of accomplishment. So not a “pretty minor thing.”
Getting a complete Starship stack off the ground and into space, and orbital refilling, strike me as considerably less risky things to debug. The Starship Earth EDL is a bit of a question mark as to ultimate difficulty, but its dynamics, except thermally, are far less onerous than the flip.
I see no reason for a human being to ever ride a Falcon Heavy – to the Moon or anywhere else.
I think it will all depend on the FAA AST. If they allow Elon Musk to go forward at Boca Chica then its a better than average probably he will make the goal. If he has to move to offshore platforms, it will delay him a year or more.
It was the same problem he had when he was kicked out of VAFB and had to go to the Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll.
I am kind of willing to suspend predictions until I see how far they get in this upcoming test flight…but you are right, if the FAA stops him and he has to move to the boats…he is going to take a delay
what do you consider the odds of them stopping him as? Me? I think they are 60/40…
Zero.
It isn’t a remotely similar situation. When SpaceX got “kicked out” of VAFB – at the behest of ULA’s execrable ex-CEO Mike Gass – it was an unproven upstart company with a handful of employees and no launch history. Now, it is the launch industry colossus and has more launches logged than ULA. The FAA isn’t going to kick SpaceX out of Boca Chica. If it persists even in dragging its institutional feet egregiously, it – and any other pissant butt-hurt bureaucrats who want to mix it up – will be taken out behind the woodshed by NASA and the DoD and things will be ‘splained to them.
Acting like SpaceX an all but the most important metrics.
I fail to see any resemblance.
SpaceX sued their way into a contracting process they were excluded from.
Blue Origin wasn’t excluded. It participated from the get-go, survived the first elimination round and then lost the second. Completely different circumstances. Again, I fail to see any resemblance.
Your sense of justice has nothing to do with it. The point is Blue Origin is going to pursue victory in court in the face of a decision against them. SpaceX did the same thing. Success at all costs, use every tool at your disposal. Surely as fan of pure unregulated capitalism in the near absence of a state, you can understand a entrepreneurs desire to win at all costs.
You’re right, my “sense of justice” indeed has nothing to do with it because that was not at all the basis of my argument. That was based entirely on the vastly different sets of circumstances that prompted the SpaceX suit against the USAF and the ULA block buy back in the day and Mr. Bezos’s sore loser tantrum. In SpaceX’s case, it was being arbitrarily refused any consideration of its wares for uses to which they were plainly applicable by the decision of a government agency. In the present case, Mr. Bezos is suing a government agency that solicited his participation but ultimately chose a different bidder. One of these things is not at all like the other.
Departing an argument you clearly lost in a cloud of Gary Church-like “Ayn Rand-in-space” squid ink doesn’t save your nonexistent point either. The situation under discussion is not occurring against a backdrop of a nearly-absent state – quite the contrary. And the use of organs of the state – courts in this case – to try indirectly jamming up a competitor is only a customary business practice in benighted places like the U.S. that lack an English Rule to limit frivolous suits.
That’s so interesting, suddenly you understand limits to the actions of a corporation when they step onto what you consider “your business”, or what you consider “The Common Good” in your view. Just about 70% of the lefties I know could have written that.
Everyone knows he’s being a sore loser, we all understand that if the patent court had granted BO’s patent claim on landing on ships/vessels/platforms/barges what have you, with your reusable rocket, New Glenn would still be waiting to pioneer that technique, or Space X would be paying a patent fee to BO for every flight that lands on a barge. But the point is, that’s good business if you can get it. Don’t advocate for predatory behavior for enterprises you like and then get bent out of shape when enterprises you don’t like practice the very same predatory business practice. You very much come across as a macho predator when it’s done to further your line of advocacy, but become a snowflake victim when those methods are used against you. I’m sure you’d say “Don’t tread on me” is a slogan you live by, but you have to understand that everyone else thinks you feel free to tread on who ever you want, and then get bent out of shape when people strike back. Grow a pair.
I was issued a pair at birth. Still got both of them. Grow a left brain hemisphere. Yours is either missing or defective as you keep responding to arguments I didn’t make. Some serious aperception going on there.
Nothing SpaceX ever sued the government about had anything to do with your quaintly antique lefty notions of businesspeople as rapacious fools and knaves. To the extent SpaceX has been a “predator” it’s because the OldSpace herd now consists entirely of the aged and infirm – always the first ones to go when the picking-off starts.
For what it’s worth, even Bezos isn’t being “predatory” here – because he’s quite unlikely to ever get anything to “eat” as a result of his current antics. He’s just being a typical whiny and entitled lefty looking for a participation trophy that was never actually on offer.
for what it is worth 🙂 Saintly father (the Supreme Court litigator) tells me that the two cases are quite different. in his words “Mush had a case, Bezos doesnt”
Musk case was a contract capable one…Bezos case is trying to go against the decision that h as been reviewed by the GAO of a government contracting agency operating strictly in the confines of the available funds
the key pivot point here is that Bezos more or less took himself out of the game when he came in with a number that was more money then the government had…
I’m not arguing that Bezos has a case. Of course he does not. But he’s using the courts to pursue his interests to the maximum of his capabilities. He’s most likely going to lose, but he’s a gambler, and obviously someone in authority in BO has decided to do this. If on the offhand they win, then it will have furthered the interests of Blue Origin. My gosh are we all so naive that some of us don’t believe this sort of thing happens?
my Dad see’s that all the time. he has a stock speech about how he will take your money and work very hard but in the end you will not triumph 🙂
THAT is the operational basis of our legal system.
You have no idea how much I would like to prove you wrong, except you’re not dammit.
Any real world legal system evolves in this direction. It creates a demand for lawyers in the form of representatives and judges, and just keeps the dollars circulating. Show me a legal system that does not bow to the will of the rich and powerful. People like Bezos want at least their chance, and as long as Bezos is willing to pay, he’ll get that chance.
I would really like to be able to devise a legal system that optimized towards justice. I get angry at many of the corrupt practices I see all around. When it gets bad enough to me, I check out some of the alternatives historically and elsewhere in the world. Gives me some perspective and appreciation without accepting that the status quo is as good as it can get.
One unfortunate thing about this type discussion is the number of fairly intelligent people that have latched on to some simple solution that is mostly irrelevant to the actual reality. People with a straight face have told me the problem is greed, or Democrats, or Republicans, or unwed mothers, or many other things that might have problems but don’t address the core issue.
There have always been thieves frex but blaming everything on the thieves without working on prevention is enabling more theft. The thief is at fault, but you shouldn’t have left your money clip on the public picnic table while playing with your kids.
Who’s definition of justice? How do you define it? Revenge? Stopping the wrong and then carrying on? Resetting to zero? …. The list of actions for justice is long and fraught with politics. Justice is a hard place to operate in.
Very hard place. Especially as there is considerable disagreement as to what it is.
No, we’re not. It happens all the time – lamentably.
But “pursuing his interests” is always a matter of interpretation and judgement. And in this case, the judgement of the plaintiff about the likelihood of prevailing seems seriously defective. His apparent belief in the lack of any serious downside to this litigation is also hard to square with ordinary notions of rationality. Blue is already losing key staffers since the HLS contract loss. That wouldn’t be happening if any of them thought Bezos had any significant chance of prevailing in court – or of self-funding a continuation of work should the court ploy fail.
Another frequent motive for such suits – to financially exhaust or otherwise consequentially injure the object of one’s suit – is not on the table here. NASA can’t yield what it doesn’t have. And, if the real target is Musk and SpaceX, “pocket depth” is pretty much equal between the sides. But that hardly matters anyway as NASA will be defended by DOJ lawyers and Musk won’t be out a dime in legal fees.
And now that the judge has wrung an agreement from both sides setting a maximum of 74 days of contract work-stoppage in which to get this case decided, it isn’t even going to result in any significant obstacle to SpaceX keeping the throttles wide open at Starbase. Bezos could appeal another loss, I suppose, but I don’t see him being able to get another stop-work injunction. And if he was to try a Supreme Court appeal after a Court of Appeals loss, I also don’t see the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the case.
Bezos is obviously using his little New Shepard instead of his brain on this one.
I would say it’s Bezo’s megalomania. As you’ve pointed out he has little chance of succeeding, he’s not going to exhaust SpaceX, or he’s rolling the dice. A spectacular failure of SS/SH could create a sense of national horror right around summary judgement time. I have a tug from old memories, reading of some jet programs from the 50’s or 60’s that were the result of a frivolous lawsuit like this where the first iteration was a dismal failure, and the prime sued their way to contract acceptance resulting in a major Cold War jet program. I need to re-look this up and see if it’s applicable to this situation.
There were a lot of fighter jet prototypes built from the late-40s to the mid-60s and there may be an example or two of egregious political influence and/or court action of the type you describe. Nothing comes immediately to mind, but I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool expert on military aviation programs of that era, never mind their legal histories. One definite political influence stinkeroo from that era was Northrop’s Flying Wing getting passed over for the far more politically-connected B-36. It was a larger-scale version of the Preston Tucker story that, fortunately, did not result in the death of the afflicted company – else SpaceX would have had no nice big building to later move into.