![]() And given its track record over the last couple of years, the Moon may now be just around the corner. In short, SpaceX is doing more with less and Elon Musk hasn't shied away from throwing that in the face of Blue Origin.įor now, SpaceX is racing ahead with its plans to complete the first orbital launch of its Starship spacecraft. SpaceX has received only $439.6 million out of the $2.9 billion to date. To date, Blue Origin has received a total of $479.7 million from NASA for the HLS contract. Blue Origin's National Team was awarded hundreds of millions during an early round of funding from NASA to design a lander in April 2020. Founder Jeff Bezos has even pledged to give NASA a $2 billion discount to sweeten the deal for the underfunded space agency.Īstonishingly, SpaceX has received less funding than Blue Origin as part of the HLS contract. Option AĪccording to a recent report by the US Government Accountability Office, NASA has $345 million at its disposal for "Option A contract payments" this fiscal year, meaning that SpaceX has received most of the 2021 funding made available to the agency.īlue Origin has put all of its weight behind getting NASA to sign it on as a SpaceX competitor. According to the NASA authorization Hearings held by the Ninety-third Congress in 1974. In other words, NASA is holding up its end of the deal the money, and the money is starting to flow in to get SpaceX's Starship to the Moon. And by the time the last Apollo mission was flown ( Apollo 17, in 1972), the program had cost a pretty penny. In 2008, SpaceX received a multi-billion dollar contract to fly cargo to the ISS. Despite several protests filed by competitors Blue Origin and Dynetics, the space company remains the only contractor developing the lander for NASA. NASA paid for roughly half the cost to develop SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. It's the first payment SpaceX is owed since it was awarded NASA's coveted $2.9 billion Human Landing Systems (HLS) contract earlier this year. The Elon Musk-led company received a $300 million payment on July 30, according to official open source data that was spotted by keen-eyed SpaceX enthusiasts on Reddit. SpaceX just got its first big round of funds from NASA to develop a lunar lander capable of sending the first astronauts to the surface of the Moon since the Apollo missions. NASA just spent $300 million on helping SpaceX develop its Starship spacecraft.
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