Jeff Bezos To Cover $2 billion In NASA costs To Get The Lunar Lander Contract

Jeff Bezos has offered to cover $2 billion in NASA cost in a bid to land the lunar lander contract for his space company, Blue Origin.

Bezos Wants To Cover NASA Costs In ExchangAmazoe For A Contract

The CEO of Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, has offered to cover roughly $2 billion of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) costs in exchange for the contract to build a lunar lander to land astronauts on the moon. NASA had already awarded the contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, but Bezos is encouraging them to keep the options open and the competition alive.

He stated that Blue Origin is offering to waive payments of up to $2 billion from NASA in the current and next two government fiscal years if they are awarded the contract. The CEO further added that Blue Origin is set to fund its own pathfinder mission to low-Earth orbit. In exchange for waiving up to $2 billion in costs, NASA would grant Blue Origin a fixed-price contract.

Bezos told NASA in an open letter that the offer is not a deferral but an outright and permanent waiver of those payments. He believes that the offer would create room for government appropriation actions to catch up.

NASA Should Promote Competition

The contract was awarded to Elon Musk’s SpaceX in April to build a $2.89 billion the next crewed lunar lander under NASA’s Human Landing Systems program. The government agency studied SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics before choosing Elon Musk’s company for the contract.

However, Bezos doesn’t feel that is the best option. “Instead of this single-source approach, NASA should embrace its original strategy of competition,” he added.

Bezos, the head of Amazon and Blue Origin, went into space earlier this month, a week after Richard Branson made the same trip with his Virgin Galactic. While Blue Origin is not a publicly-listed company, its sister company Amazon is performing well so far today.

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