Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin continues to contest NASA's decision to award the Artemis lunar lander contract to SpaceX's Starship. The company has released an infographic underscoring the mission's technical complexities—a move drawing mixed reactions in the space industry.
NASA selected SpaceX to develop its Starship as the Human Landing System for the Artemis program, aiming to return humans to the Moon for the first time since Apollo. Blue Origin, a key competitor, protested the single-provider award, advocating for at least two contracts to foster competition, as previously indicated.
Blue Origin filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which recently dismissed the complaint.
Undeterred, Jeff Bezos emphasized that Blue Origin could forgo over $2 billion in NASA funding if awarded the contract. Recently, the company shared an infographic, highlighted on Twitter by NASA Spaceflight's Adrian Beil, contrasting approaches: SpaceX's as "extremely complex and high risk," versus Blue Origin's as "safe, low risk, and fast."
The infographic asserts SpaceX would require ten Starship launches for orbital refueling to enable a single lunar landing. While refueling is integral to SpaceX's architecture, the company has not publicly specified the exact number for crewed missions. The source of Blue Origin's figures remains unclear.
Space industry commentator Eric Berger of Ars Technica tweeted: "The majority of Blue Origin employees I've met are bright, friendly, hard-working people who joined the company because they believed in their mission. They also respect what SpaceX does and probably find this kind of thing embarrassing."
Meanwhile, at SpaceX's Starbase, teams are preparing Super Heavy Booster 4 and Starship SN20 for static fire tests, paving the way for their first orbital flight attempt soon.
