When humans first set foot on another celestial body, the moon, in 1969, it captivated the world. This “small step” for man was the culmination of a decade long frenzy by the world’s two largest powers, the USA and Russia, to first put a man in space and then to put a man on the moon. When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and spoke his immortal words, the world was watching. After this amazing feat of human engineering though, the interest in moon landings started to fade, as after the first few landing the scientific benefits were declining and the main motive of national pride had been achieved, man left the moon, to never return. NASA had had its budget sliced by a large amount, as the propaganda-use of the moon landings had faded, and priorities had shifted elsewhere.
That is, until five decades later. Nasa announced the Artemis project, and to facilitate this, the agency allowed private companies to bid for the production of some parts of the moon missions, for instance the moon lander. The three finalists for the moon lander contract were Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Dynetics (McFall-Johnsen, 2021). The clear-cut winner for NASA’s mission was SpaceX, as it provided the best prospect for by far the lowest cost, which is why NASA chose the company’s proposal over the others. Besides this specific offer, SpaceX is miles ahead of its competitors, by actually developing reusable rockets and successfully launching and landing them from orbit, a feat no other private space company has been able to do (Fernholz, 2021). To combat SpaceX’s victory over the other two companies, Blue Origin sued NASA for alleged inaccuracies in its selection process (Koren, 2021), putting the whole Artemis program on hold (or even cancelling it) until the lawsuit is resolved. By suing, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is able to flatline progress towards space exploration for its own. This of course raises the question: should companies be able to completely halt progress in human accomplishment? While legal processes and due diligence are important, I think in this case a much better company is being stifled by a lesser company’s greed, and mankind is off worse because of it.
References
Fernholz, T. (2021). Blue Origin is still catching up to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Quartz. https://qz.com/2037008/blue-origin-is-still-catching-up-to-elon-musks-spacex/.
Koren, M. (2021). Jeff Bezos Needs NASA to Listen to Him. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/bezos-blue-origin-lunar-lander-lawsuit/619831/.
McFall-Johnsen, M. (2021). NASA’s top official says Blue Origin lawsuit could delay human return to the moon. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-lead-says-blue-origin-lawsuit-may-delay-moon-landing-2021-9?international=true&r=US&IR=T.
This blogpost has certainly made me think. Suing in these situation seems critical to keeping the broader market fair. If laws were to make an exception for industries such as spacecraft development, then fair competition may be put at risk within these industries. An unfair competitive environment created by the changing of law may actually impede long term innovation.