SpaceX finally exposed this after ex-NASA Chief Criticizes Starship HLS Unnecessary...
SpaceX finally exposed this after ex-NASA Chief Criticizes Starship HLS Unnecessary...
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SpaceX finally exposed this after ex-NASA Chief Criticizes Starship HLS Unnecessary...
“if there's any setbacks with all of those Starship launches, you have to start over again, which uh is not is this the architecture that currently exists”
What an irony! The same man who once handed SpaceX the Artemis 3 contract, who once believed Starship would take us back to the Moon…is now one of its loudest critics.
That man is former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. Recently, his comments have sparked such a backlash in the space community that SpaceX finally spoke out publicly calling him out, and gaining a wave of support from fans and industry insiders alike.
So, what made Bridenstine turn his back on SpaceX? And how did the company respond?
Let’s find out in today's episode of Alpha Tech.
SpaceX finally exposed this after ex-NASA Chief Criticizes Starship HLS Unnecessary...
If America really makes it back to the Moon, more than fifty years after Apollo, that would be something truly incredible. The idea was first revived under the Trump administration in 2019. Back then, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine fully supported it. And eager to win the president’s favor, he officially announced the Artemis Program in March of that year.
At the International Astronautical Congress later in 2019, Bridenstine said, “We’re going to the Moon with commercial partners, and we’re not going to do it alone.”
That message was clear: NASA couldn’t go to the Moon by itself anymore. It needed help from the private sector. About a year later, in April 2020, under Bridenstine’s leadership, NASA picked three companies to build prototype lunar landers: SpaceX with Starship HLS, Blue Origin with its Blue Moon Lander and Dynetics with Dynetics HLS. But here’s the twist, SpaceX only received $135.6 million to kickstart its lunar Starship. That’s tiny compared to the others. Blue Origin got a massive $579 million, and Dynetics received $253 million.
SpaceX finally exposed this after ex-NASA Chief Criticizes Starship HLS Unnecessary...
But don’t get it wrong, the smaller amount didn’t mean NASA was underestimating SpaceX. It’s because Starship HLS was by far the cheapest proposal, and SpaceX had bid the lowest price, simply because they believed in their fully reusable design, the first of its kind in the world.
And just a few months later, the company successfully launched its first crewed Dragon spacecraft to the ISS under the Demo-2 mission, finally ending America’s decade-long dependence on Russia’s Soyuz to send astronauts into space.
That moment strengthened NASA’s trust, and Bridenstine’s confidence, in SpaceX. So, in April 2021, NASA made it official: SpaceX would be the sole contractor for Artemis 3, with a $2.89 billion deal. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, unwilling to accept that outcome, immediately filed a protest, claiming the selection process had been unfair.
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