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Cristian Rus@CristianRus4Jeff Bezos, after leaving Amazon, is fully involved in Blue Origin. The founder of the space company was part of Blue Origin's first manned flight into space and just a few days later he has returned to the fray. He says he is willing to forgo up to $2 billion of spending for a NASA Moon mission. All in order to return to compete with SpaceX for said contract.
In an open letter posted on the official Blue Origin website, Jeff Bezos has addressed NASA Administrator General Bill Nelson. In the post he talks about the recent controversy involving the agency, SpaceX and Blue Origin. Likewise, he offers a new proposal to “fix” things: give up 2,000 million dollars from NASA.
It all started a few months ago, when Blue Origin was competing with SpaceX and Dynetics for a NASA contract. NASA usually offers contracts to different companies to develop parts of a mission. Generally, several contracts are also offered to several companies as long as they compete with each other and ensure that if one fails they can use the other's proposal. It was not so in this case.
NASA awarded the contract for the Artemis mission's Moon lander to SpaceX. In this way, he eliminated Blue Origin from the competition. Something that Blue Origin did not like at all, which has even asked the United States Government to review the process. This has caused NASA to temporarily stop the contract with SpaceX until the situation is resolved.
2,000 million dollars from the pocket of Jeff Bezos
At this point, what Jeff Bezos has decided is to propose a solution because "it is not too late to remedy it." What he is proposing is that if NASA awards Blue Origin the lander contract, it will cover $2 billion of the costs itself. What's more, he even says that Blue Origin will also cover overruns if there are any, to protect NASA "from partner cost escalation concerns."
Why? According to Jeff Bezos, he is honored "to be in a financial position to be able to do it." With this he hopes that NASA will again offer several contracts as it has done for a long time so that there is competition between the different companies.
In MagnetThe new race to the Moon: why China, Russia and other countries want to set foot on the satelliteThis however does not guarantee anything. It is only a proposal from Blue Origin and not the decision of NASA, which has not yet responded to the open letter. Even if this proposal is accepted, Blue Origin will have to compete with SpaceX for the final lunar module. The effort of Jeff Bezos, find any case, is extraordinary.
More information | Blue Origin
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