this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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Lunar landing next week?
I love how the Musk circlejerk is basically absent on Lemmy compared to Reddit. The NASA contract funding (that they never should have gotten) has already been burned through, and HLS doesn't even EXIST yet. No Mockup, no plans, and the barebones basic can barely limp into orbit.
SpaceX is at zero out 20(ish) required launches for the first demo, and they require two of those before Artemis 3.
Idk why you're being down-voted. It really is a breath of fresh air not to have people calling Musk a god (twitter is heckin WEIRD).
That being said, saying that SpaceX shouldn't have gotten the contract is an unusual take. Care to explain?
As for the funding, not only is it milestone-based (so they absolutely have not used it all up), but it's pretty easy to see that the majority of the investment is coming from SpaceX itself. Honestly NASA got a pretty sweet deal if you ask me!
The lawsuit files by Blue Origin is public, and the judge basically said "well, the terms of the contract were technically not violated, so there is no crime", but it was highly unethical.
In brief: there were quite a few dubious claims in the reasoning behind giving SpaceX the contract, but the main reason SpaceX was granted the HLS because they were the only company who came in under the (originally undisclosed) 2.9 billion budget.
The reason for this is that the person in charge of the program at NASA, Kathy Leuders, took it upon herself to give SpaceX a call to inform them of the available budget. SpaceX then decided to amend their bid to come in just under budget, when the other parties were over budget since they didn't get a call. She did this very briefly before quitting NASA, and I'll give you a single guess which company now employs her.
The judge said this was fine, because the contract allowed "negotiations" with the parties. Blue Origin has offered to meet the price of SpaceX as well, but since they didn't receive a highly unethical call too, it came in after the contract was awarded.
SpaceX has since received all the funding NASA had available, has missed every milestone in its schedule so far. So I feel fine saying they shouldn't have been awarded the contract.
Some reading: https://washingtontechnology.com/2021/08/was-spacexs-lunar-lander-win-a-fait-accompli/359576/