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Jeff Bezos v. Elon Musk v. Bernie Sanders: A Petty Battle For Billions
Musk and Bezos are fighting, using SpaceX and Blue Origin as their avatars. Part of this stems from the fact that they’ve been wrestling for the “richest man on Earth” title for a couple years now.
Part of it also has to do with NASA choosing SpaceX over Blue Origin in a project that will take astronauts to the moon.
Bezos filed lawsuits against SpaceX and NASA in order to secure the position, which led NASA to push back their trip to the moon to 2025. This trip is supposed to be a historic one, as well. The ship, created by SpaceX, will carry the first person of color to the moon.
According to Bill Nelson, a NASA administrator: “Returning to the Moon as quickly and safely as possible is an agency priority. However, with the recent lawsuit and other factors, the first human landing under Artemis is likely no earlier than 2025.”
Those “other factors” he’s talking about involve creating a new human landing system in the midst of a global pandemic, along with insufficient funding.
Most of all, and this is according to Nelson himself, the program was held up by Blue Origin’s lawsuit. Bezos’ company said that the “procurement process was flawed,” and the Government Accountability Office rejected this claim. So, the lawsuit was…