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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk explains why Blue Origin’s Starship lawsuit makes no sense
For the first time since SpaceX competitor Blue Origin took NASA to federal court after losing a Moon lander contract to Starship and a protest over that loss, unsealed documents have finally revealed the argument Jeff Bezos’ space startup is focusing on in court.
After the details broke in new court documents filed on Wednesday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk weighed in on Twitter to offer his take on why the arguments Blue Origin has hinged its lawsuit on make very little sense.
While one seemingly significant portion of the main complaint claiming to reveal “additional substantial errors” in SpaceX’s Starship HLS proposal was almost fully redacted, most of the opening argument is legible. In short, Blue Origin appears to have abandoned the vast majority of arguments it threw about prior to suing NASA and the US government and is now almost exclusively hinging its case on the claim that SpaceX violated NASA’s procurement process by failing to account for a specific kind of prelaunch review before every HLS-related Starship launch.
For NASA’s HLS competition, SpaceX proposed to create a custom variant of Starship capable of serving as a single-stage-to-orbit crewed Moon lander with the help of the rest of the Starship fleet – including Super Heavy boosters, cargo/tanker Starships, and a depot or storage ship. SpaceX would begin a Moon landing campaign by launching a (likely heavily modified) depot Starship into a stable Earth orbit. Anywhere from 8 to 14 Starship tanker missions – each carrying around 100-150 tons of propellant – would then gradually fill that depot ship over the course of no more than six or so months. Once filled, an HLS lander would launch to orbit, refill its tanks from the depot ship, and make its way to an eccentric lunar orbit to rendezvous with NASA’s Orion spacecraft and three Artemis astronauts.
As Blue Origin has exhaustively reminded anyone within earshot for the last five months, SpaceX’s Starship Moon lander proposal is extremely complex and NASA is taking an undeniable risk (of delays, not for astronauts) by choosing SpaceX. Nevertheless, NASA’s Kathy Lueders and a source evaluation panel made it abundantly clear in public selection statement that SpaceX’s proposal was by far the most competent, offering far a far superior management approach and technical risk no worse than Blue Origin’s far smaller, drastically less capable lander.
The bulk of Blue Origin’s argument appears to be that its National Team Lander proposal was drastically disadvantaged by the fact that SpaceX may or may not have incorrectly planned for just three ‘flight readiness reviews’ (FRRs) for each 16-launch HLS Starship mission. While heavily redacted, Blue Origin wants a judge to believe that contrary to the US Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) fair assessment that such a small issue is incredibly unlikely to have changed the competition’s outcome, it would have “been able to propose a substantially lower price” for its lander. To be clear, a flight readiness review is an admittedly important part of NASA’s safety culture, but it ultimately amounts to paperwork and doublechecks over the course of a day or two of meetings.
All else equal, the need to complete an FRR before a launch is incredibly unlikely to cause more than a few days of delays in a worst-case scenario and would have next to no cost impact. There is no reasonable way to argue that being allowed to complete some launches without an FRR would have singlehandedly allowed Blue Origin to “[engineer] and [propose] an entirely different architecture.” Nevertheless, that’s exactly what the company attempts to argue – that it would have radically and completely changed the design it spent more than half a billion dollars sketching out if it had only been able to skip a few reviews.
Curiously, Blue Origin nevertheless does make a few coherent and seemingly fact-based arguments in the document. Perhaps most notably, it claims that when NASA ultimately concluded that it didn’t have funds for even a single award (a known fact) and asked SpaceX – its first choice – to make slight contract modifications to make the financial side of things work, NASA consciously chose to waive the need for an FRR before every HLS Starship launch. Only via purported cost savings from those waived reviews, Blue Origin claims, was NASA able to afford SpaceX’s proposal – which, it’s worth noting, was more than twice as cheap as the next cheapest option (Blue Origin).
Ultimately, it thus appears that Blue Origin may have a case to make that NASA awarded SpaceX the HLS Option A contract despite a handful of errors that violated contracting rules and the HLS solicitation. Relative to just about any other possible issue, though, it’s hard not to perceive the problems Blue Origin may or may have correctly pointed out as anything more than marginal and extraordinarily unlikely to have changed the outcome in Blue’s favor had they been rectified before the award. Most importantly, even if Blue Origin’s argument is somehow received favorably and a judge orders NASA to overturn its SpaceX HLS award and reconsider all three proposals, it’s virtually inconceivable that even that best-case outcome would result in Blue Origin receiving a contract of any kind.
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Tesla Superchargers get massive nod in new study showing reliability
It showed Tesla Superchargers had the highest score on the 1,000-point scale with 709. They also had the highest reliability, as respondents reported they only had failed charging visits at Tesla Superchargers four percent of the time.
Tesla Superchargers got a massive nod in a new study that showed reliability across EV charging suppliers as electric car ownership in the United States continues to grow.
J.D. Power’s 2025 U.S. Electric Vehicle Experience Public Charging Study aims to find the most (and least) reliable charging suppliers for EV owners.
While charging has become much more popular over the past few years, thanks to the increase in sales of electric vehicles, they are still not quite as plentiful as gas pumps for combustion engine cars.
Tesla is rolling out a new ‘Supercharger queue’ in an effort to end one issue
For this fact alone, it is imperative that EV charging companies offer a fast and reliable product that will enable confidence and peace of mind for car owners. There are quite a few companies out there, but Tesla has the most expansive charging network, not only in the U.S., but globally.
It also has the most reliable chargers, a fact that was reiterated in this year’s J.D. Power study, which was released today.
It showed Tesla Superchargers had the highest score on the 1,000-point scale with 709. They also had the highest reliability, as respondents reported they only had failed charging visits at Tesla Superchargers four percent of the time. This beat out Electrify America at six percent, Red E at 10 percent, and EVgo and 12 percent.
🚨 Tesla Superchargers also scored the highest in a 1,000-point customer satisfaction scale with a score of 709.
It dropped 22 points from last year, but the study showed most complaints came from non-Tesla owners who said processing and payments were not as streamlined as they… https://t.co/myv5kOLkgY
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 13, 2025
These companies were the only ones to report failed charging visits below the average.
Tesla’s 709 score on the 1,000-point scale was a 22-point drop from last year, but the study said that most of the complaints came from non-Tesla owners.
Many non-Tesla EVs now have access to the company’s Supercharging Network, and the complaints came from those drivers as they stated the process and payment were not as streamlined for them.
Brent Gruber, Executive Director of the EV practice at J.D. Power, said:
“Tesla has facilitated an experience for its owners by creating an optimal technical environment that makes the charging process very easy to use and complete payments. That process isn’t quite as streamlined for non-Tesla owners.”
This likely came from the increased per-kilowatt-hour rate that non-Tesla owners are required to pay for having access to the company’s massive charging network.
For Tesla owners, reliability is not much of a concern. Apart from vandalism, it is pretty rare that a Supercharger stall is out of service, but, of course, it happens.
The important thing to note is that this study continues to show Tesla’s focus on keeping its charging network up and running, especially now that non-Tesla owners are able to utilize them.
Investor's Corner
Deutsche Bank boosts Tesla (TSLA) stake by 20.8% to over $2.6 billion
The German banking giant now owns 10,076,461 Tesla shares.
Deutsche Bank AG has significantly increased its position in Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), boosting its stake by 20.8% in the first quarter.
The German banking giant now owns 10,076,461 Tesla shares, an additional 1,733,531 shares compared to the previous quarter, valued at roughly $2.61 billion.
A top holding
As noted in a report from MarketBeat, Tesla now represents about 1% of Deutsche Bank’s overall investment portfolio, making it the firm’s 13th-largest holding. This also means that Deutsche Bank now owns 0.31% of the electric vehicle maker, at least as of its most recent SEC filing.
Tesla shares are typically volatile, and they are still being traded actively, with an average trading volume of 104.7 million. As of writing, Tesla has a market capitalization of around $1.11 trillion, making it the biggest automaker in the world by far.
Institutional investors
Deutsche Bank is not the only firm that has been increasing its stake in TSLA. Charles Schwab Investment Management raised its Tesla holdings by 4.9% in Q1, resulting in the firm now controlling over 18.17 million shares worth $4.71 billion. Evolution Wealth Advisors also increased its Tesla stake by 85.7% to over 13,000 shares.
Overall, institutional support for Tesla remains robust, with 66.2% of the company’s stock held by hedge funds and other large investors.
TSLA stock has been seeing some momentum as of late, amidst reports that the electric vehicle maker is making progress in several of its key initiatives. Tesla’s Robotaxi business in Austin and the Bay Area is expanding well, and Elon Musk recently announced that FSD V14 should be released soon to consumers. Tesla China is also expected to launch the Model Y L, a six-seat extended wheelbase version of its best-selling car, before the end of the third quarter.
News
Tesla flexes its most impressive and longest Full Self-Driving demo yet
Tesla is flexing a lengthy Full Self-Driving demo from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Tesla its most impressive and longest demo of the Full Self-Driving suite, showing a zero-intervention trek from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles. The drive required no interventions from the vehicle operator, the video showed.
It also included a quick Supercharging stop about two-thirds of the way in.
Tesla has been extremely confident in the performance of the FSD suite since releasing it years ago. However, with improvements in data comprehension and storage with its neural nets, as well as a more refined Hardware system, FSD has made significant strides over the last year.
I took a Tesla Model Y weekend-long Demo Drive – Here’s what I learned
Tesla’s prowess with driving tech has established the company as one of the industry leaders.
In a new video released on Tuesday, Tesla showed a drive of roughly 360 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles, a trek of about six-and-a-half hours, with zero interventions using Full Self-Driving:
7 hour road trips aren’t so bad when your Tesla does all the driving pic.twitter.com/tIrmhDAbRf
— Tesla (@Tesla) August 12, 2025
Full Self-Driving is not fully autonomous, but it does operate under what Tesla calls “Supervised” conditions. This means that the driver does not have to have their hands on the wheel, nor do they have to control the accelerator or brake.
Instead, Tesla’s internal cabin-facing camera tracks eye movement to ensure the driver is ready to take over at any time and is paying attention.
The version of FSD used in this example is likely the version that the public has access to; the only differentiating factor would be the Hardware version, as older vehicles do not have HW4.
With Tesla’s Robotaxi suite in Austin operating since late June, the company stated that those vehicles are using a version that is not yet available to the public. It does not require anyone to be in the driver’s seat, which is how the vehicles are able to operate without anyone in the driver’s seat.
Tesla Superchargers get massive nod in new study showing reliability
Deutsche Bank boosts Tesla (TSLA) stake by 20.8% to over $2.6 billion
Tesla flexes its most impressive and longest Full Self-Driving demo yet
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