NASA Statement on Court’s Dismissal of Blue Origin Lawsuit on Human Landing System Award
WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA was notified Thursday that the U.S. Court of Federal Claims denied Blue Origin’s bid protest, upholding NASA’s selection of SpaceX to develop and demonstrate a modern human lunar lander. NASA will resume work with SpaceX under the Option A contract as soon as possible.
In addition to this contract, NASA continues working with multiple American companies to bolster competition and commercial readiness for crewed transportation to the lunar surface. There will be forthcoming opportunities for companies to partner with NASA in establishing a long-term human presence at the Moon under the agency’s Artemis program, including a call in 2022 to U.S. industry for recurring crewed lunar landing services.
Through Artemis missions, NASA will lead the world in landing the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface, conduct extensive operations on and around the Moon, and get ready for human missions to Mars.
25 responses to “NASA Statement on Court’s Dismissal of Blue Origin Lawsuit on Human Landing System Award”
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Now Bezos can return to fighting Superman ?
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
oh surprise…this is probably the only part of the lunar “thing” that (other then the gateway which is a separate thing) is working well
this should pay for Musk making a crew version of the second stage that heralds an operations level crew Starship. but of course who knows how long this will take and what the dollar figure per lunar lander is
in the meantime the agency is slowing grinding to a halt. 1) its unclear how much SLS/Orion will cost per launch but it wont be cheap and that sticker shock is going to hit when the thing finally flies…2) nelson has been phenomenally unsuccessful at getting any more money, which shows all in all a general lack of support…3) there want be a well financed (if at all) second lander 4) 2028 i slipping away as a date for anything but the gateway
Robert PS we will find that a SINGLE launch of SLS/Orion will cost the entire Starship development money 🙂
I think you’re too pessimistic.
I’m certainly no supporter of SLS (I say, cancel it now), but it looks on track to fly in 2022, as does Starship/SH.
Nelson just got almost a billion dollars extra money for NASA infrastructure repair – on top of NASA’s already substantial budget (much of which is wasted on SLS, but anyway, substantial). I agree that there’s a general lack of strong support except among the contractor/NASA Center districts.
The extra money NASA/Nelson was looking for beyond infrastructure would have gone to funding development of a 2nd lander design – but neither of the rejected lander designs actually met NASA’s lander requirements! Let the lunar lander bidders improve their designs and compete for a follow on contract (as is NASA’s plan); let’s not throw a bunch of taxpayer money at them just to, in effect, pay Bezos protection money to stop suing us.
The mid 2020s to 2028-ish seem doable. If SLS/Orion successfully fly an unmanned test mission around the Moon in 2022 and SpaceX pulls off a successful suborbital flight (including reentry) of Starship/SH, I don’t see any reason (barring a major setback such as an explosion on a test flight) why a lunar landing would be more than half a decade away. Of course, a major setback is always possible.
IIRC, if one were to take the variable costs of each shuttle launch and then take all fixed costs associated with space shuttle operations (i.e., basically all of KSC, plus much of MSFC and JSC, the Edward’s landing strip, SRB recovery ships, etc.) and apportion them to each launch, completely forgetting about STS development costs, each shuttle launch cost about $2 billion dollars. An SLS launch should be roughly in that same Apollo/Space Shuttle launch cost neighborhood. In other words, we’ve been down this road before and supported it for decades. Not saying it’s good, because then there’s little to no money to do anything else and progress stagnates, but at the cost of one SLS launch every year or two, the US has consistently shown the willingness to fund that level of space pork
yeah I dont agree with much of that AND YES I am very pessimistic
SLS cost are going to be in the 3-5 billion range…to fly 1 a year . there is really not enough money in the budget right now to do that…one can see that if you look at the recent proposal to change the foundations of SLS and try and get some other group to pay for another launch
SpaceX is about (in my view) 2 years maybe three from flying a functional lunar vehicle and the tanker support for it…no one has really any idea/ideal how much that all cost…
what Ballast Bill got was infrastructure money. Dynetics is probably the closest thing, in my view to a “real lander”…and probably affordable as well. thats just my opinion, but I have massive doubts about the ability of a 50-100 ton vehicle with SpaceX footprint to land on unprepared regolith…and really dont see the need…
but the congress just shut Bill down. and that is critical. there is probably not enough money to fly SLS more then once every two years
these are only my opinions…Robert
“these are only my opinions” – yeah, sure, I understand. And I respect that. There’s certainly cause for one to reasonably consider that, like James Webb, the whole thing, budget and schedule both, will be extended out to almost inconceivable extents.
But about the SLS costs, although the cost per flight may be very high, they only plan on doing one flight every year or two — that’s in line with annual shuttle operating costs that were sustained for 30 years
greetings….I bet you SLS and Orion cost are in the 4 bil range per flight.
“…one can see that if you look at the recent proposal to change the foundations of SLS and try and get some other group to pay for another launch”
What proposal is that? I must have missed it – a proposal to commercialize SLS or some such?
Shuttle flights worked out to $1.6 billion each. There were 135 of them over 30 years. The SLS-Orion program overhead is roughly comparable to Shuttle’s, the development portion of the total budget has been more and the variable costs per launch will also be more as none of the hardware will be reused. But, given that only 15 – 30 launches of SLS would be possible over 30 years, the all-up cost per mission is likely to be roughly five times that for Shuttle – $8 billion per mission. That ain’t gonna happen.
Thank you for the cost estimates. So, let me revise what I said (but my basic point remains the same):
The per-mission costs aren’t important, it’s the annual cost.
Congress, in particular the relevant appropriating committees, strongly wants to spend this money every year. Whether the money is spent over a half dozen Space Shuttle launches or a single SLS/Orion launch makes no difference to them. The critical part is that the money must be distributed to their districts annually in the [annual] budget process.
As far as I can see it.
I wish things were different, but…
Fortunately, eventually Starship/SH will make the inevitable inevitable and SLS/Orion will die, but it’s likely going to take Starship/SH in all-up operations and running rings around SLS before that happens
Which should happen in 3 – 5 years, max – making the idea of 30 more years of SLS operations pretty much a shroom dream.
yeah I suspect 8 is the high end…but its over 4
Your last sentence is likely too optimistic. I think the cost of a single SLS-Orion launch will vastly exceed the entire Starship program development cost. See my comment to therealdmt below.
No matter how it shakes out, it shows the effects of a type of inflation. SLS is 80’s style project complexity. When we did it in the 80’s it only hurt real bad, it didn’t break the bank. Now it breaks the bank.
But it won’t break the bank if congress is willing to keep shoveling money at it. The endlessly debatable question is when will they stop being willing to shovel more money at it. I can’t read those tea leaves.
None of us can. We don’t really understand the motivation for Congress to do this other than the top level funding projects in their district/state. Patriotism means something different to people in power. The control laws for the machine change when you’re in leadership. But overall I think Congress and a lot of people in NASA are more than happy to develop forever and never fly. I don’t think that’s an evil evolution, I think it’s very human. I see it in aviation all the time. On the flight line everyone’s a daring pilot until it’s time to climb into the cockpit and fly.
A quote that applies to far more than pilots and flight lines.
True. Everyone likes the idea of pulling on the leather helmet and throwing the silk scarf around one’s neck. They also like the idea of sitting in the O-club after the mission “debriefing” over a favored tipple. It’s the in-between part that’s always the problem.
The motivation is always political survival. And there is an inverse relationship between willingness to initiate and continue fundamentally corrupt bargains and the likelihood of public discovery, notice and opprobrium and/or ridicule falling on one’s head. Thus far, SLS-Orion and associated skullduggeries have been episodes of What We Do in the Shadows. But the sun is in the process of rising. When it finally gets sufficiently light out, all the night creatures will have fled and hidden as best they can and only their doings will be there to see.
I wish it were that simple.
Keep in mind, SLS and Falcon Heavy can reach cis Lunar space with large payloads without tanking. SLS is likely to fly before Starship tanks in orbit. I find it believable that two SLS flights can take place before Starship tanks. Is there budget for this? ????? I think we’re going to have a much better idea about this by March next year.
Big day today move into my apartment on the left coast and on board…all on video 🙂 except I have to go turn in my contractor badge and get a real one 🙂
hope you are well
the problem is that no one knows how much all this cost…for really anything…and I think cost are high. Nelson is pushing these changes to SLS operations because he knows cost are out of sight…
March will be some sort of watershed one way or the other…and hopefully by then we have a house in mind here 🙂
I am told the effort polls badly…
Certainly with you on the March of next year thing. By that time, I think we’ll still be waiting on Artemis 1 – which I figure will go in April at the earliest – but Starship may have flown as many as three times, at least one of which is likely to have featured an intact return and landing via Chopsticks on the Starbase tower.
Also agree on-orbit Starship tanking will not precede Artemis 1. But it will happen next year. Artemis 2, meanwhile, seems unlikely to happen before late 2023 at the earliest.
Budget for the Artemis missions 1 – 3 seems pretty well assured. Beyond that – Heare Be Monsters. The idea that SLS will fly for 30 years is simply daft.
Three flights by April 2022. Ambitious. With landing back at the pad!
At this point, I can’t make any real long term prognostications. Lot’s is about to happen, and how well the equipment works will set the pace. Now I become a passive observer. I don’t think we have too many subsystems to appear before a flight. All I’ll say is between now and the next 6 months, it’s believable Starship will fly to orbit. And in that period, we’ll we see how well it all falls out. Those first few flights are going to set the pace for the next two years or so. 2022 will be exciting. I’m still going to call first flight for after new years…….But I’m much more ready to be wrong on that than I was in Jan of this year.
The only hope for sustaining SLS would have been if Obama had not cut the lander. SLS is so expensive, no matter now long Starship takes to be ready for cis Lunar flights, budget pressures are going to kill it. Without the existing ability for SLS to perform a flags and footprints flight, it’s a dead end. Even then, it’s a dead end.
Hey Jeff, the best revenge (since you seem to swing that way) is to live well. Become a philanthropic genius. Build a reusable New Glenn. Build your Space Reef. Become the dominant force in low Earth orbit (where most of the money is anyway).
if humanity does not produce an economy in LEO it will not go any further out