Jeff Bezos with "Blue Moon" lunar lander concept. Image: Jonathan Newton/ The Washington Post via Getty Images
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Though Musk and Bezos have traded personal taunts before, their feud has been amplified since April by NASA’s decision to award SpaceX a prestigious $2.9 billion contract to build a “human landing system” for the Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon this decade. Blue Origin submitted a bid for the same contract, and has since filed a protest about the selection with the Government Accountability Office, prompting NASA to temporarily suspend development of SpaceX’s lander due to the ongoing litigation.The dispute has reached the US Capitol thanks to a proposed amendment to the Endless Frontier Act, a bill investing $110 billion in various technologies that is currently making its way through Congress. The amendment was added by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), who represents the state where Blue Origin is headquartered. Cantwell’s additions includes a clause that reads: “In addition to amounts otherwise appropriated for the Artemis program, for fiscal years 2021 through 2026, there is authorized to be appropriated $10,032,000,000 to NASA to carry out the human landing system program.” The amendment also urges NASA to develop an additional lunar lander for the Artemis program.
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On Monday, Sanders voiced his opposition to the extra $10 billion in appropriations by submitting his own amendment with the stated purpose of eliminating the funding. “It does not make a lot of sense to me that we would provide billions of dollars to a company owned by the wealthiest guy in America,” Sanders told The Intercept. Cantwell, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, advocated for a second lunar lander contract during the confirmation hearing of Bill Nelson, who is now serving as NASA administrator, on the grounds that it would provide resilience and redundancy to the Artemis program. “NASA has a big tradition of ensuring resilience in commercial programs by using multiple competitors and maintaining what’s called dissimilar redundancy,” Cantwell said at the hearing. “So I want to know that you will commit to rapidly providing Congress with a plan for assuring that kind of resilience of the human lander program.”The Senate may vote on the Endless Frontier Act as early as this Thursday, and will then be passed to the House of Representatives for its input and judgement. Regardless of the ultimate fate of the legislation, the friction between the billionaire leaders of SpaceX and Blue Origin is likely to outlive it.Update: This article has been updated to include Blue Origin’s statement about the human landing system.