NASA suspends SpaceX’s $2.9B moon lander contract after rivals protest | Hacker News Reader

NASA suspends SpaceX’s $2.9B moon lander contract after rivals protest

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43 pointspseudolus11 comments

Doesn't seem to be that much of a material objection. Is it true that NASA isn't required to have more than one company for a contract? As for competitive bidding (in terms of money), it would be hard for competitors to bid similarly with similar capabilities for the similar probabilities of success, including making it in time.

Ultimately I think you're right, considering that SpaceX received the least in initial design funding, and yet still ended up bidding less than half of what Blue Origin did. Also interesting to note that both Dynetics and Blue Origin both had partners in the process, while SpaceX stood alone in its concept.

It seems fair to say that Blue Origin is lagging behind SpaceX, but they appear to have had success with their BE-4 engine, which is at least partly comparable to the Raptor. ULA has contracted with them to supply engines, which have reportedly moved into production phase.

If I were Jeff Bezos, I would probably be pissed too that I didn't get a piece of this contract, regardless of which phase of development the program is in. These types of government contracts helped pave the way for SpaceX's current success story.

Either way, this commercial competition is a huge boon for US leadership in space technology.

BE-4 had years of delay and the initial version is way under powered compared to its size and potential and will not be reused. They had huge issues with it and that has likely delayed the Vulcan rocket considerably.

Its only comparable to the Raptor in because of the fuel and that it is 'staged' in terms of most metrics its far behind.

> These types of government contracts helped pave the way for SpaceX's current success story.

Because SpaceX out-competed the competition in these selections and were the most successful despite getting the least amount of money.

On one hand, I suspect Raptor is still going through initial design problems. One of indications is the "engine rich" exhaust on a recent SN landing.

On the other hand, "staged combustion" and "full-flow staged combustion" are significantly different in terms of required efforts. USSR had the first one working since mid-1960s, multiple designs were made and flown since then, it's a standard design mode for Soviet/Russian engineers. At the same time the second one was not quite completed in late 1960s and wasn't returned to since - anywhere, except Aerojet Rocketdyne prototype - and the Raptor.

So... I think Blue Origin is still noticeably behind SpaceX in terms of engine technology. I wish SpaceX had more competition, but right now they are unquestionably one of world leaders in it.

The engine rich exhaust has likely more to do with the fuel input being wrong because of pressure issues in the tanks.

SpaceX can afford to continue to iterate. BlueOrigin needs to produced a fixed finished verified engine to a costumer for expensive military payloads.

> except Aerojet Rocketdyne prototype

Was only a part of the engine.

NASA usually only has one contractor. Having two is very rare.

In this case, they would have liked two, but didn't have the funding for it.

The competition was set up to provide freedom to the contractors. NASA wanted contractors to bring ideas. They had minimum criteria but NASA tried to keep these general.

The contractors were then evaluated, technically and for management, and their financial bid was evaluated.

That isn’t true. NASA has many contractors. The biggest joke made about NASA is that it exists to give as many jobs to different Congressional districts as possible.

The SpaceX bid wasn’t just superior to the other two bids, it also aligned with the Artemis’s mission to get to Mars. SpaceX’s Starship is about getting to Mars and the Moon is just a stop.

Dynetics and Blue Origin’s bid was about getting to the Moon. It didn’t support the longer term vision of Artemis IMO.

I think many people also forget this is the first of two Lunar bids. The second will be for “recurring landing services”.

For all the criticism of Elon, SpaceX is a far superior launch company to what is currently in the market.

We will see what will happen with ULA’s Vulcan Centaur, but right now SpaceX is winning.

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You misunderstand. Sure NASA has many contractors, but not for the exact same thing. Commercial crew and commercial cargo is one of very few programs that do.

> The SpaceX bid wasn’t just superior to the other two bids, it also aligned with the Artemis’s mission to get to Mars.

Agree, it was clearly the best.

But the Mars part was a very small of the evaluation in the document.

NASA said they preferred two HLS contractors for redundancy. But, at the end of last year, Congress decided to give NASA only 25% of the budget they'd requested for HLS. And after that, NASA decided that with only 25% of their requested HLS budget, they couldn't afford two contractors any more, and decided to only go with one.

Dynetics in their bid protest [0] argue that deciding to go with only one contractor fundamentally changed the entire competition, and that NASA should have abandoned it, restarted it, or amended it, in response. However, if you read the original NASA request for proposals [1] it says that (page 8) "While NASA reserves the right to change its HLS acquisition strategy at any time, NASA is currently planning to award Base Contract Line Item Numbers (CLINs) to up to four contractors; exercise Option A CLINs for up to two of those contractors; and later exercise Option B CLINs for either one or two Option A contractors". Dynetics argument that NASA fundamentally changed their strategy is hard to take seriously given that all along NASA was saying it would reward "up to two" Option A contracts, which left open the possibility that it might award only one. It also said (page 60) "NASA reserves the right to select for award multiple, one, or none of the proposals received in response to this Appendix. The overall number of awards will be dependent upon funding availability and evaluation results" (my emphasis). NASA knew all along that it might not get as much money from Congress as it wanted, and the current situation was a foreseen possibility that NASA envisaged in the original solicitation.

[0] https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000179-212b-d22a-affb-e92bf...

[1] https://beta.sam.gov/api/prod/opps/v3/opportunities/resource...

Suspended until the watchdog reviews two protests

This is what is called "Dog in the manger": the dog can't eat the hay, but won't let in any who can eat it.

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