Competing with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos’ Company Will Sell Tickets to Space

Jeff Bezos has founded Blue Origin since 2000, a few years ahead of Elon Musk’s space exploration company SpaceX, founded in 2002.

The two started the competition by both setting a target to commercialize space travel. With the ambition to bring anyone to explore the outer parts of the earth, including the competition to build human civilization on other planets.

Even so, the competition between the two did not appear to stand out until SpaceX finally won a contract with NASA in early April. The US space agency opened a competition for a lunar exploration project, and Bezos’ Blue Origin proposal was declared defeated.

Earlier this week, Blue Origin filed a lawsuit with US regulators over allegations of fraud by NASA over the defeat of their proposal. Blue Origin accused NASA of only telling SpaceX to revise its proposal to match the funding they had.

“NASA made a flawed acquisition of the Human Landing Systems program and moved the goalposts at the last minute. In NASA’s own words, it has made a ‘high-risk’ choice.” the company wrote in its official statement as quoted from The Washington Post.

Not only that, Blue Origin also accused NASA of changing the weight of the assessment by emphasizing price as the most important factor in determining which proposals will be approved.

Meanwhile, NASA was previously known to have chosen two winners for the mission. And apart from SpaceX and Blue Origin, the fighter manufacturer, Dynetics is also in the race for this contract.

NASA then decided to select only one winner on the grounds that the funds approved by the US Congress were limited. The cooperation contract with SpaceX is worth USD 2.9 billion, while Blue Origin is known to have submitted a proposal with a value of USD 6 billion.

Reporter: Abdul Azis Said

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