Moderators: richierich, ua900, PanAm_DC10, hOMSaR
flyingturtle wrote:I thought that laws prevent companies from selling products and services at a loss when they have been produced with these losses already in mind.
Blue Origin just not giving up on the HLS program. Says the GAO’s decision highlights issues that “will prevent the U.S. from landing on the moon” and says it is concerned about SpaceX needing 16 launches, with limited flight readiness reviews, to get Starship to the moon.
ThePointblank wrote:In case Blue Origin doesn't realize this, but the GAO's decision is final, and throwing a (very) public tantrum because you didn’t get your way is not a good look.
A Blue Origin spokesperson I spoke with today left open the possibility of taking the HLS fight to the Court of Federal Claims and Bob Smith said in a statement to the Post that BO is “hopeful that NASA will take advantage of our offer” to waive $2 billion in development fees.
ThePointblank wrote:They are acting like their very survival depends on this contract
SamYeager2016 wrote:ThePointblank wrote:They are acting like their very survival depends on this contract
Perhaps it does... Just because Bezos is worth a lot doesn't mean he has a large amount of readies to chuck in BO's direction.
GDB wrote:SamYeager2016 wrote:ThePointblank wrote:They are acting like their very survival depends on this contract
Perhaps it does... Just because Bezos is worth a lot doesn't mean he has a large amount of readies to chuck in BO's direction.
Hasn't his now ex trouble and strife got half of his money?
Though I think it is a pride thing, it might be he really thought the BO led bid was the 'natural' choice.
Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin brought its fight against NASA’s Moon program to federal court on Monday, doubling down on accusations that the agency wrongly evaluated its lunar lander proposal. The complaint escalates a monthslong crusade by the company to win a chunk of lunar lander funds that was only given to its rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and comes weeks after Blue Origin’s first protest over the Moon program was squashed by a federal watchdog agency. Now in court, Blue Origin’s challenge could trigger another pause to SpaceX’s contract and a new lengthy delay to NASA’s race to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024.
So why is Blue Origin doing this? Three theories I've heard:
• CEO Bob Smith has been told he is fired unless he wins an HLS contract
• Jeff Bezos is employing a "Burn the Ships" strategy
• Bezos is counting on Congress to bail him out
FGITD wrote:She should start her own rocket venture, SAMs designed to shoot down Blue Origin launches.
Blue Origin's actions in court—in addition to its ham-handed release of infographics that seek to denigrate SpaceX but have been widely mocked within the space community—are having a negative effect on both the company's relationships with the US government and its own employees.
"They will never get a real government contract after this," one NASA source predicted, following the lawsuit filing. The sentiment may be similar at the US Space Force, which is frustrated by delays in the delivery of BE-4 rocket engines for United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket.
One user who identified as a Blue Origin employee took to reddit on Monday to express the frustrations of some, if not a majority, of people working at the Washington state-based company. "I personally believe that the vast majority of the company's employees do NOT agree with the infographics and other PR stunts that the company's leadership has been pushing," the employee wrote. "I have not met a single one that does feel this way. In fact, most of us are rather disgusted and embarrassed to be represented in this manner."
There are concerns that Blue Origin's aggressive attitude toward the Human Landing System contract will drive key employees away as morale drops. On Monday, for example, a senior engineer on Blue Origin's Human Landing System project, Nitin Arora, announced on LinkedIn that he is leaving the company to work at SpaceX. "Next stop, SpaceX! I am incredibly excited and looking forward to it," he wrote.
ThePointblank wrote:Again, Eric Berger at Ars Technica has an excellent scoop as to how employees over at Blue Origin and NASA are feeling, and it appears that the recent actions of senior management at Blue Origin has generated a ton of ill-will:
We could see an exodus of employees from Blue Origin towards other companies, such as SpaceX, Boeing, Relativity, and Firefly, which could already delay even further work that Blue Origin is already under contract for. Not good.
FGITD wrote:ThePointblank wrote:Again, Eric Berger at Ars Technica has an excellent scoop as to how employees over at Blue Origin and NASA are feeling, and it appears that the recent actions of senior management at Blue Origin has generated a ton of ill-will:
We could see an exodus of employees from Blue Origin towards other companies, such as SpaceX, Boeing, Relativity, and Firefly, which could already delay even further work that Blue Origin is already under contract for. Not good.
I say it in half my space related posts on here-I try not to be biased, I want space progress and everyone to succeed. But it’s getting real hard to support Blue Origin. They seem to be of the belief that if it’s not them doing the job, then no one should.
It’s a hard position to argue with the government that they need your contract as it’s more feasible, while another government agency is currently waiting impatiently because you can’t even provide PART of a booster on time. Frankly, I’ve had enough of them. The modern space age can move on without them, shouldn’t be too hard given that they have barely even touched space as is.
I saw the Reddit post cited in that article. Interesting insight. A lot of the engineers who left SpaceX for the more relaxed life at Blue Origin are apparently looking to go back to SpaceX because they value their work actually leading to something tangible. At X you have engineers who saw their project go from idea to drawing board to launch within a matter of a few years. Not suing the competition. And beyond them, like the article mentioned, there are more than a few other companies out there that I’m sure would love to grab engineers
Nitin Arora
Mission Architecture and Integration Lead, Human Landing System at BLUE ORIGIN
16h
Friday (August 13th) was my last day at BLUE ORIGIN. It was one hell of a ride working on the lunar program. Really honored that I got a chance to work with and lead incredibly smart, passionate people over last three years. Special thanks to everyone who I worked with daily. I will miss you all.
Next stop, SpaceX ! I am incredibly excited and looking forward to it.
ThePointblank wrote:FGITD wrote:ThePointblank wrote:Again, Eric Berger at Ars Technica has an excellent scoop as to how employees over at Blue Origin and NASA are feeling, and it appears that the recent actions of senior management at Blue Origin has generated a ton of ill-will:
We could see an exodus of employees from Blue Origin towards other companies, such as SpaceX, Boeing, Relativity, and Firefly, which could already delay even further work that Blue Origin is already under contract for. Not good.
I say it in half my space related posts on here-I try not to be biased, I want space progress and everyone to succeed. But it’s getting real hard to support Blue Origin. They seem to be of the belief that if it’s not them doing the job, then no one should.
It’s a hard position to argue with the government that they need your contract as it’s more feasible, while another government agency is currently waiting impatiently because you can’t even provide PART of a booster on time. Frankly, I’ve had enough of them. The modern space age can move on without them, shouldn’t be too hard given that they have barely even touched space as is.
I saw the Reddit post cited in that article. Interesting insight. A lot of the engineers who left SpaceX for the more relaxed life at Blue Origin are apparently looking to go back to SpaceX because they value their work actually leading to something tangible. At X you have engineers who saw their project go from idea to drawing board to launch within a matter of a few years. Not suing the competition. And beyond them, like the article mentioned, there are more than a few other companies out there that I’m sure would love to grab engineers
Or, already started to.
A lead HLS engineer over at Blue Origin updated his Linkedin page to show he's left Blue Origin to go work at SpaceX:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/ur ... 003886080/Nitin Arora
Mission Architecture and Integration Lead, Human Landing System at BLUE ORIGIN
16h
Friday (August 13th) was my last day at BLUE ORIGIN. It was one hell of a ride working on the lunar program. Really honored that I got a chance to work with and lead incredibly smart, passionate people over last three years. Special thanks to everyone who I worked with daily. I will miss you all.
Next stop, SpaceX ! I am incredibly excited and looking forward to it.
That's not good news for Blue Origin... and I won't be surprised if an exodus wave starts.
GDB wrote:I suppose really that someone like Bezos, for all his 'aw shucks, I started Amazon in my garage', while admirable to be successful from there in itself, is as we have seen with his other businesses, a monopolist.
Like the sociopath who gave the world Facebook.
But it's one thing to be very ambitious, as is Musk of course, quite another to have started his space business around the same time as Musk did but to have so little progress to show in comparison, then not only only sue the agency who you need to realize your Lunar ambitions and now to do a ham fisted attempt at bad mouthing Space X.
As they said a lot in The Sopranos 'you got some balls, y'know that?'
estorilm wrote:GDB wrote:I suppose really that someone like Bezos, for all his 'aw shucks, I started Amazon in my garage', while admirable to be successful from there in itself, is as we have seen with his other businesses, a monopolist.
Like the sociopath who gave the world Facebook.
But it's one thing to be very ambitious, as is Musk of course, quite another to have started his space business around the same time as Musk did but to have so little progress to show in comparison, then not only only sue the agency who you need to realize your Lunar ambitions and now to do a ham fisted attempt at bad mouthing Space X.
As they said a lot in The Sopranos 'you got some balls, y'know that?'
True, he's alienating himself from everyone in the industry (including ULA by the way) purely due to ego. The whole thing is just strange; "if I threaten enough people, or maybe even throw money at them, I'll get what I want... because that's how my entire life has worked!"
For all the comparisons that people draw between Bezos and Musk, the two have polar opposite personalities. I hope you all have seen the 3-part series of personal interviews and facility tours that Musk gave to the Everyday Astronaut on YouTube. He's such a humble guy, and you can see him thinking years ahead every time he stares off into the distance for a second. It's not about the money for him, he welcomes a challenge - even some of the greatest challenges mankind has tackled before. In contrast, Bezos just wants his money, monopoly, and ego.
GDB wrote:estorilm wrote:GDB wrote:I suppose really that someone like Bezos, for all his 'aw shucks, I started Amazon in my garage', while admirable to be successful from there in itself, is as we have seen with his other businesses, a monopolist.
Like the sociopath who gave the world Facebook.
But it's one thing to be very ambitious, as is Musk of course, quite another to have started his space business around the same time as Musk did but to have so little progress to show in comparison, then not only only sue the agency who you need to realize your Lunar ambitions and now to do a ham fisted attempt at bad mouthing Space X.
As they said a lot in The Sopranos 'you got some balls, y'know that?'
True, he's alienating himself from everyone in the industry (including ULA by the way) purely due to ego. The whole thing is just strange; "if I threaten enough people, or maybe even throw money at them, I'll get what I want... because that's how my entire life has worked!"
For all the comparisons that people draw between Bezos and Musk, the two have polar opposite personalities. I hope you all have seen the 3-part series of personal interviews and facility tours that Musk gave to the Everyday Astronaut on YouTube. He's such a humble guy, and you can see him thinking years ahead every time he stares off into the distance for a second. It's not about the money for him, he welcomes a challenge - even some of the greatest challenges mankind has tackled before. In contrast, Bezos just wants his money, monopoly, and ego.
Yes, I've seen Tim Dodd go from Russian spacesuited eccentric amateur, to still an amateur but great and enthusiastic reporter with incredible access, to Musk, to the former head of NASA when still in post and not forgetting Peter Beck at Rocketlab.
They see a kindred spirit and while it does no PR harm for the companies and agency, typically corporate PR is more bite sized and simplified, not as in Tim's latest series, over two and a half hours of yes some visual spectacle but mostly crunchy engineering detail.
Musk is not only a CEO, he is like it or not, that dreaded word, a celebrity, he's made his missteps in the past outside of SpaceX but as Starbase and Starship get bigger in every sense of the word, we will see, have really already, a lot less of that.
How many high profile CEO's admit on camera that they are not sure, might be wrong on that, it might blow up and when posed a question he does not know and now wants to, texts the Engineer who will?
Somehow I doubt Tim will get an interview, much less like the ones above, with Bezos.
GDB wrote:Like the sociopath who gave the world Facebook.
But it's one thing to be very ambitious, as is Musk of course, quite another to have started his space business around the same time as Musk did but to have so little progress to show in comparison, then not only only sue the agency who you need to realize your Lunar ambitions and now to do a ham fisted attempt at bad mouthing Space X'
GDB wrote:SamYeager2016 wrote:ThePointblank wrote:They are acting like their very survival depends on this contract
Perhaps it does... Just because Bezos is worth a lot doesn't mean he has a large amount of readies to chuck in BO's direction.
Hasn't his now ex trouble and strife got half of his money?
Though I think it is a pride thing, it might be he really thought the BO led bid was the 'natural' choice.
Jeff Bezos flew to space late last month, but his company has lost top talent since the billionaire space founder came back to Earth.
At least 16 key leaders and senior engineers have left Blue Origin this summer, CNBC has learned, with many moving on in the weeks after Bezos’ spaceflight.
Aesma wrote:
However he left the CEO position of Amazon, to concentrate on Blue Origin. He has put billions into it, much more than Elon (who basically put nothing into SpaceX because he was not a billionaire at the time).
To him it's something very personal.
NASA "reluctantly agrees" to extend the stay on SpaceX's HLS contract by a week bc the 7GB+ of case-related docs in the Blue Origin suit keeps causing DOJ's Adobe software to crash and key NASA staff were busy at Space Symposium this week, causing delays to a filing deadline. lol https://t.co/HcTHsTAUfZ
Under NASA's voluntary pause to SpaceX's contract — which it only did if Blue Origin agreed to move litigation quickly — the end date was November 1st. Now it looks like it'll be November 8th. https://t.co/kQhl93q0Yr
DOJ lawyers say the size of the case material from parties in Blue Origin's lawsuit is "extraordinarily voluminous, consisting of hundreds of individual documents and over seven gigabytes of data." They're asking the court if they can submit it all on a DVD instead
Update: Judge grants the DVD plan and the DOJ's new deadline to file case docs from Aug. 27th to Sept 3rd, but keeps the rest of the schedule as is. So SpaceX's stay is not extended to Nov 8th - it remains Nov. 1st. https://t.co/xvjrDfS73o
Aesma wrote:I'm sure who is not leaving Blue Origin's payroll are the lawyers...
A former communications executive at Blue Origin and 20 other current and former employees have written a blistering essay about the company's culture, citing safety concerns, sexist attitudes, and a lack of commitment to the planet's future.
"In our experience, Blue Origin’s culture sits on a foundation that ignores the plight of our planet, turns a blind eye to sexism, is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns, and silences those who seek to correct wrongs," the essay authors write. "That’s not the world we should be creating here on Earth, and certainly not as our springboard to a better one."
Published Thursday on the Lioness website, the essay is signed publicly by only Alexandra Abrams, who led employee communications for the company until she was terminated in 2019. The other signatories, a majority of whom were engineers, declined to publicly disclose their names because they did not want to jeopardize employment at Blue Origin or harm their prospects in the aerospace industry for other jobs.
FGITD wrote:I’ve had enough of them. Industry doesn’t need this nonsense in it
RJMAZ wrote:Blue origin is a joke of a company. Stunts like this are meant to bring in new investment to continue the scam for a few more years before everyone loses their money.
bikerthai wrote:Criticizing a company without knowing it's mission statement, it's business plan, or the people who work there make make a joke out of your statement.
FGITD wrote:Absolutely, what a misguided statement.
About three years ago, Blue Origin officials knew they were behind, failing to deliver on their founder's grandiose vision.
With Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos had long talked about building a world-class space transportation company and had even gone so far as to trademark "Build a Road to Space." But despite being nearly two decades old, Blue Origin had not built a road to space, nor even launched an orbital rocket.
Meanwhile, the rocket company founded by Bezos' rival, Elon Musk, had establishing itself as the most dominant launch company in the world. By the fall of 2018, SpaceX was well on its way to launching a record 21 rockets in a single year, had debuted the Falcon Heavy, and was starting to seriously reuse first stage boosters.
"Blue is kind of lazy compared to SpaceX," one Blue Origin executive admitted in an internal memo in late 2018.
These were not easy facts for Blue Origin's leadership to contemplate. But they realized that if Blue Origin was going to become a great launch company, it should learn from the best. So in the late summer of 2018, as Bob Smith marked his first anniversary as chief executive of Blue Origin, he hired a management consulting firm called Avascent to assess SpaceX's strengths and weaknesses.
ThePointblank wrote:Eric Berger with yet another well written article about how Blue Origin hired a consultant years ago to evaluate SpaceX's strengths and weaknesses and to determine where was Blue Origin struggling in their attempts at competing with SpaceX:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10 ... ch-spacex/About three years ago, Blue Origin officials knew they were behind, failing to deliver on their founder's grandiose vision.
With Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos had long talked about building a world-class space transportation company and had even gone so far as to trademark "Build a Road to Space." But despite being nearly two decades old, Blue Origin had not built a road to space, nor even launched an orbital rocket.
Meanwhile, the rocket company founded by Bezos' rival, Elon Musk, had establishing itself as the most dominant launch company in the world. By the fall of 2018, SpaceX was well on its way to launching a record 21 rockets in a single year, had debuted the Falcon Heavy, and was starting to seriously reuse first stage boosters.
"Blue is kind of lazy compared to SpaceX," one Blue Origin executive admitted in an internal memo in late 2018.
These were not easy facts for Blue Origin's leadership to contemplate. But they realized that if Blue Origin was going to become a great launch company, it should learn from the best. So in the late summer of 2018, as Bob Smith marked his first anniversary as chief executive of Blue Origin, he hired a management consulting firm called Avascent to assess SpaceX's strengths and weaknesses.
Basically, from the leaked screenshots of the report, Blue Origin identified a couple of key strength SpaceX has that Blue Origin needs to catch up on in order for them to compete:
1. Customer Focus. SpaceX spends a lot of effort on satisfying customers, seeking to provide desirable services at a lower cost. They work with their customer to develop the best, cheapest solution for the customer's needs, not think of the customer as a nuisance and that they know better.
2. Focus on Cost Control. SpaceX is extremely good at cost control at all stages of development, seeking to minimize costs from the design stage to manufacturing. SpaceX thinks about costs during manufacturing during the design stage, to ensure components are easy and cheap to make during production, and not worry about designing the best solution bar none.
3. Vertical Integration. This ties into cost control, but SpaceX is famously vertically integrated, with the bulk of their rocket being built in house, and some components farmed out to other manufacturers.
4. Talent Management. SpaceX is extremely good at attracting young talent at lower salaries, due to a better vision and better overall compensation.
5. Getting the Most Out of Their Talent. SpaceX is known for pushing their employees to work long hours, while in contrast, Blue Origin is far more relaxed, even when deadlines are fast approaching, and they need as many hands on deck to help push projects through.
6. Iterative Design. SpaceX is well known for it's iterative design process, where they spend more time building and testing, and less time studying and designing problems. SpaceX is more than happy to have test articles blow up on the test stand as long as they learn about what happened and how to fix it.
It's very telling that apparently, this report is a few years old, and very little progress has been made by Blue Origin to act on the input they received from a consultant. And it's equally interesting that the mere existence of this report, along with the senior management comments got leaked to a journalist at this time.
Tugger wrote:ThePointblank wrote:Eric Berger with yet another well written article about how Blue Origin hired a consultant years ago to evaluate SpaceX's strengths and weaknesses and to determine where was Blue Origin struggling in their attempts at competing with SpaceX:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10 ... ch-spacex/About three years ago, Blue Origin officials knew they were behind, failing to deliver on their founder's grandiose vision.
With Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos had long talked about building a world-class space transportation company and had even gone so far as to trademark "Build a Road to Space." But despite being nearly two decades old, Blue Origin had not built a road to space, nor even launched an orbital rocket.
Meanwhile, the rocket company founded by Bezos' rival, Elon Musk, had establishing itself as the most dominant launch company in the world. By the fall of 2018, SpaceX was well on its way to launching a record 21 rockets in a single year, had debuted the Falcon Heavy, and was starting to seriously reuse first stage boosters.
"Blue is kind of lazy compared to SpaceX," one Blue Origin executive admitted in an internal memo in late 2018.
These were not easy facts for Blue Origin's leadership to contemplate. But they realized that if Blue Origin was going to become a great launch company, it should learn from the best. So in the late summer of 2018, as Bob Smith marked his first anniversary as chief executive of Blue Origin, he hired a management consulting firm called Avascent to assess SpaceX's strengths and weaknesses.
Basically, from the leaked screenshots of the report, Blue Origin identified a couple of key strength SpaceX has that Blue Origin needs to catch up on in order for them to compete:
1. Customer Focus. SpaceX spends a lot of effort on satisfying customers, seeking to provide desirable services at a lower cost. They work with their customer to develop the best, cheapest solution for the customer's needs, not think of the customer as a nuisance and that they know better.
2. Focus on Cost Control. SpaceX is extremely good at cost control at all stages of development, seeking to minimize costs from the design stage to manufacturing. SpaceX thinks about costs during manufacturing during the design stage, to ensure components are easy and cheap to make during production, and not worry about designing the best solution bar none.
3. Vertical Integration. This ties into cost control, but SpaceX is famously vertically integrated, with the bulk of their rocket being built in house, and some components farmed out to other manufacturers.
4. Talent Management. SpaceX is extremely good at attracting young talent at lower salaries, due to a better vision and better overall compensation.
5. Getting the Most Out of Their Talent. SpaceX is known for pushing their employees to work long hours, while in contrast, Blue Origin is far more relaxed, even when deadlines are fast approaching, and they need as many hands on deck to help push projects through.
6. Iterative Design. SpaceX is well known for it's iterative design process, where they spend more time building and testing, and less time studying and designing problems. SpaceX is more than happy to have test articles blow up on the test stand as long as they learn about what happened and how to fix it.
It's very telling that apparently, this report is a few years old, and very little progress has been made by Blue Origin to act on the input they received from a consultant. And it's equally interesting that the mere existence of this report, along with the senior management comments got leaked to a journalist at this time.
To me, what is most interesting is this isn't just the consultant, this was put together from comments from the Blue Origin executive team. The consultant pulled the SpaceX "best of/best abilities" and then put it to the Blue Origin management team who then made the comments that then made the report to the Blue Origin president.
Tugg
FGITD wrote:This whole fiasco has convinced me that...
flyingturtle wrote:FGITD wrote:This whole fiasco has convinced me that...
...Congress should simply indicate the goals, designate a budget and appoint something like a Space General. The General is both above and outside of politics, like every military commander. Then, the General orders what he needs from SpaceX, ULA and other companies to get the job done.
Now, there is simply too much meddling.
flyingturtle wrote:FGITD wrote:This whole fiasco has convinced me that...
...Congress should simply indicate the goals, designate a budget and appoint something like a Space General. The General is both above and outside of politics, like every military commander. Then, the General orders what he needs from SpaceX, ULA and other companies to get the job done.
Now, there is simply too much meddling.
In the United States Court of Federal Claims
No. 21-1695C
Filed: November 4, 2021
BLUE ORIGIN FEDERATION, LLC,
Plaintiff,
v.
UNITED STATES,
Defendant,
and
SPACE EXPLORATION
TECHNOLOGIES CORP.,
Defendant–Intervenor.
ORDER OF JUDGMENT
For the reasons assigned in the Memorandum Opinion filed concurrently with this Order of Judgment, the defendant’s motion to dismiss (ECF 60) under Rule 12(b)(1) and Rule 12(b)(6) of the Rules of the Court of Federal Claims is GRANTED. The defendant’s motion for judgment on the administrative record (ECF 60) under Rule 52.1 of the Rules of the Court of Federal Claims is GRANTED. The defendant–intervenor’s motion for judgment on the administrative record (ECF 62) is GRANTED. The plaintiff’s motion for judgment on the administrative record (ECF 61) is DENIED.
So that the Court may release the opinion publicly, the parties shall meet and confer and jointly propose redactions to the Memorandum Opinion by November 18, 2021. Until the Court releases the opinion publicly, the parties are reminded that the protective order remains in force and they shall not disclose either the opinion or any portion of the opinion to any person not admitted to the protective order.
The Clerk is DIRECTED to enter judgment for the defendant and defendant–intervenor in accordance with the Memorandum Opinion and this Order and to close the case. No costs are awarded.