Elon Musk Reacts to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Moon Lander NASA Struggle

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have been exchanging the title of the world’s richest man or woman lately as the stock benefit of their respective most important businesses (Amazon and Tesla) fluctuates. On the private aspect, the two centibillionaires’ space ventures are also in a heated competition—to build a human-landing automobile on the moon for NASA.

NASA in April chosen SpaceX as the sole contractor for this project beneath the agency’s Human Landing Units (HLS) method. Bezos has vehemently protested the final decision considering the fact that then, asking NASA to employ Blue Origin as a second contractor to market level of competition.

Late final thirty day period, Bezos presented in an open letter to NASA Administrator Monthly bill Nelson to waive up to $2 billion in upcoming payments Blue Origin is entitled from NASA beneath current contracts if the company would award a independent lunar lander deal to his corporation.

Whilst NASA hasn’t responded, Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith reported in a statement to The Washington Write-up this 7 days that the business is “hopeful that NASA will just take benefit of our offer.”

Reacting to the latest advancement, Musk on Wednesday tweeted a mocking photo of a deflated Blue Origin moon lander prototype and captioned, “Somehow, this wasn’t convincing…”

By some means, this wasn’t convincing … pic.twitter.com/qAn8Y6i5Ys

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2021

The picture, which appears to be taken at a Blue Origin occasion, was initially posted on Reddit in 2019 with the title “Deflated Blue Balls.”

Prior to Bezos’ open letter, Blue Origin experienced filed a complaint with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), accusing NASA of violating its procurement technique and hampering level of competition by picking only 1 HLS contractor. The GAO afterwards ruled that NASA had operate a fair competition. But Blue Origin didn’t give up.

On Wednesday, The Washington Post house reporter Christian Davenport tweeted that Blue Origin is looking at taking the case to the Courtroom of Federal Statements. Musk’s photograph was in response to that tweet.

“We firmly believe that that the problems determined with NASA’s lunar procurement and its outcomes should be tackle to develop competition and guarantee a protected return to the moon for The usa. We carry on to stage out the concerns in the prior selection procedure,” Smith explained in his assertion.

“The HLS combat might go on [to] be intensive, nevertheless the GAO’s verdict was pretty definitive,” Davenport tweeted. “But I however guess Elon wishes Jeff were being paying additional time on obtaining Blue to orbit. As he said in April, ‘I believe he needs to operate BO complete-time for it to be effective. Frankly, I hope he does.’”