Musk's Blue Origin Lagging Behind SpaceX... Protest Letter to NASA

NASA Moon Exploration Project 'Artemis'
SpaceX Selected Over 'Blue Origin'
"There Are Defects... Competition Opportunity Removed" Protest Letter

Elon Musk, the founder of the American space exploration company SpaceX, arrived on the 23rd (local time) at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the crewed spacecraft Crew Dragon is scheduled to launch.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

Blue Origin, the space exploration company founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, submitted a 50-page protest letter to NASA after being excluded from NASA's lunar lander project.

According to foreign media including AFP on the 26th (local time), Blue Origin sent the protest letter after losing to Elon Musk's SpaceX in the selection of the lunar lander developer for NASA's human lunar exploration project, 'Artemis.'

NASA recently selected SpaceX as the lunar lander contractor with a contract worth $2.89 billion (3.2 trillion KRW) among three candidates including SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics. Artemis is a project aiming to send humans back to the moon in 2024, half a century after the last moon landing of Apollo 17 in 1972.

Blue Origin claimed, "There are flaws. It eliminates the opportunity for competition and significantly narrows the supply base for space exploration," adding, "The United States' plan to return to the moon by 2024 will not only be delayed but also become risky." They further emphasized, "Since there is no ongoing program for lunar exploration other than this project, a potential monopoly will be created in future NASA exploration missions."

The reason SpaceX was selected as the contractor is because it is developing a reusable launch and landing integrated spacecraft. This method is less expensive than Blue Origin's lunar lander, which consists of three separate modules for ascent, descent, and transfer. Additionally, SpaceX's vision of human settlement on the moon and Mars through reusable spacecraft also worked in its favor in the contractor selection.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.