Cry Me A River: Jeff Bezos Is Suing NASA For $2.9 BILLION Because They Decided To Work With Elon Musk Instead Of Him

Source - Jeff Bezos' ongoing rivalry with SpaceX is heating up. His aerospace company, Blue Origin, has filed a lawsuit against NASA after the agency awarded a highly coveted contract for a lunar lander to Elon Musk's SpaceX instead.

Blue Origin's federal suit accuses NASA of having been "unlawful and improper" in its evaluation of proposals concerning its human landing system program, SpaceNews reported.

In April, NASA awarded a nearly $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX to collaborate with the agency to design and develop a lunar lander to carry astronauts to the moon — ensuring that SpaceX will likely play a big role in the first lunar landing with humans since 1972.

Does anyone give a shit about this? Honestly. Yeah, it was cool that we went to space, but enough is enough. No one is asking for a moon landing. No one was even asking for space travel, but we tolerated it because it was a distraction from what was happening on earth. That and people like to see billionaires compete. 

Here are the details of the lawsuit...

In July, Blue Origin argued in an open letter that NASA gave SpaceX an unfair advantage during the proposal process. Bezos' company also said by choosing only one company to receive a contract, the space agency made it possible for one firm possibly to "[have] insurmountable leverage over NASA."

Without competition, Blue Origin said, "short-term and long-term lunar ambitions will be delayed, will ultimately cost more, and won't serve the national interest."

In the letter, Blue Origin offered to sacrifice up to $2 billion in future payments should NASA amend its decision.

Blue Origin and Dynetics, another private company, filed a formal complaint with the Government Accountability Office over NASA's decision to work solely with SpaceX.

But the GAO concluded in July that NASA did nothing wrong. NASA said in its initial announcement that the agency had the option of issuing multiple awards, a single one or none at all, dependent on funding, GAO said. NASA in the end went with only one company because it didn't have enough funding for more than one award. The GAO also said that NASA evaluated all proposals fairly.

TL/DR: NASA didn't want to spend the money to fund both SpaceX and Blue Origin, so they went with SpaceX. Seems fair to me. If I were Bezos I'd just fund it myself, but I get why he didn't- he just bought another $23 million dollar apartment in the same NYC building so his funds are tied up. That and wants things to be "fair"...whatever that means. NASA has until October 12th to respond to Blue Origin's, but we won't know what they say because Blue Origin was granted a "protective order" to keep details of the case secret. Oh well. Talk to me when people are actually on the moon. I don't want to know about the process. No one does.