News
SpaceX and NASA defeat Blue Origin’s Starship Moon lander lawsuit
While specific details of the decision are likely a few weeks away, the US Court of Federal Claims has denied an infamous Blue Origin lawsuit, upholding NASA’s decision to award SpaceX a contract to create a Starship-derived Moon lander.
The ruling ends almost seven months of delays explicitly caused by protests and lawsuits filed by competitors Dynetics and Blue Origin. Protests were first filed with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) about a week after NASA announced in April 2021 that SpaceX would build the Human Landing System. Both protests were denied in July but Blue Origin ultimately chose to double down and filed a lawsuit against NASA and SpaceX in August, kicking off a process guaranteed to cause several more months of delays.
NASA’s decision to contract with SpaceX alone defied most expectations, especially when the space agency ultimately explained that SpaceX’s Starship proposal was half the price of the next best option while simultaneously offering better management and more convincing technical expertise. More importantly, rather than attempting to deliver the bare minimum specifications NASA requested from HLS bidders, SpaceX’s Starship Moon lander went above and beyond, enabling potentially revolutionary performance magnitudes better than Blue Origin or Dynetics’ offerings.
Based on their redacted GAO protests, both of which contained a litany of frivolous arguments and dubiously relevant and self-unaware jabs at SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics were furious about their losses. Aside from one minor nitpick, GAO wholly denied both protests, at which point Blue Origin took the matter to federal court rather than slink home, tail between its legs. In the interim between protest filing and GAO’s decision, Blue Origin also repeatedly tried to go behind NASA’s back by having sympathetic members of Congress tack on amendments to unrelated bills that would have forced the space agency to select a second HLS lander without guaranteeing the additional funding needed to pay for it.
Blue Origin owner and former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos even sent an unsolicited letter and proposal to NASA offering to pony up $2B of the ~$6B it requested to develop a NASA Moon lander. SpaceX, on the other hand, did what NASA’s HLS request for proposal (RFP) explicitly asked of bidders and proposed to pay half of its Starship lander development costs in its original proposal, while Blue Origin instead attempted to milk as much money from NASA as possible under the delusional premise that NASA would then negotiate for a cheaper deal (illegal under basic contracting rules).
Later on, weeks into the lawsuit, redacted court filings revealed that Blue Origin had abandoned most of the arguments it put forth in its GAO protest and was instead leading with the claim that a few minor (but potentially valid) violations of contracting rules made by NASA and SpaceX in their limited post-award negotiations. It’s now clear that the presiding judge was far from convinced by that argument, instead ruling entirely in SpaceX and NASA’s favor and upholding the space agency’s HLS procurement process.
It remains to be seen if the judge was at all swayed by any of the several arguments Blue Origin threw at the wall, something that the court’s final redacted decision will hopefully clarify when it’s released around November 18th. In the meantime, it’s unclear when exactly NASA and SpaceX will be able to finally get back to work on HLS. Prior to the court’s decision, NASA’s voluntary stay of performance – preventing collaboration with SpaceX on its HLS contract – was scheduled to expire on November 8th.
The brief decisions can be read here (PDF) and here (PDF).
Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”
SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.
It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.
Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.
Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:
Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America.
This will be the first of many.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.
Elon Musk revealed in a post on X that “Permits were impossible to get,” explaining the fate of The Boring Company’s most ambitious East Coast proposal.
The comment responded to a query about what became of his July 20, 2017 announcement that he had “just received verbal govt approval” for an underground Hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., capable of carrying passengers from the Big Apple to the Nation’s Capital in just 29 minutes.
The Boring Company receives verbal ‘approval’ to build NY to DC Hyperloop tunnel
The 2017 post, which envisioned city-center stations and multiple elevators in each city, sparked immediate scrutiny. Local and state officials in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. said they had no knowledge of any approval. A White House spokesperson confirmed only “promising conversations” about the transformative infrastructure.
Musk clarified shortly after that there was “still a lot of work” to do for formal approvals.
@cybrtrkguy Permits were impossible to get
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
Limited progress followed, as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s administration issued a conditional utility permit and supported work near Fort Meade. In 2018, Washington, D.C., granted a preliminary permit for site preparation and excavation on a vacant lot at 53 New York Ave. NE in the NoMa neighborhood, which The Boring Company said could become a station.
A draft environmental assessment for a D.C.-Baltimore segment was released in 2019. Yet, by April 2021, the company had removed the project from its website, and the Federal Highway Administration reported receiving no indication of further interest. Communication with Maryland officials had ceased.
The full corridor would have required coordination among the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the Federal Highway Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, and other agencies.
Environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, utility clearances, and approvals for novel infrastructure added to the overall complexity of the project and its approval.
Speculation on the permitting barriers centers around a few factors, but a multi-state, multi-level route involving unproven high-speed vacuum-tube technology inherently triggers exhaustive safety, environmental, and engineering reviews that can stretch for years, even for conventional projects.
There are also other elements, of course, like officials who may face political exposure if a privately funded, untested system encountered anything such as cost overruns, delays, or safety issues. On the outset of this project, there were limited things such as engineering plans or demonstrated technology maturity, which also added to the potential skepticism.
The East Coast vision for Boring Co., once framed as a privately funded revolution that could reshape Northeast travel, quietly ended without construction of the promised network. Musk’s recent statement frames the outcome as a regulatory impasse, unfortunate but not unexpected.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to his social media platform X on Sunday to remind everyone that the Roadster’s true meaning is not about company growth or adding dollars to shareholders’ pockets. Sometimes, you just do things because you can.
Following the Roadster’s epic unveiling event last Thursday, skeptics and critics of the company or the project itself came out to say that the vehicle is a pointless project because it is not geared toward growing the company, delivering supreme margins for profitability, nor does it contribute to the big picture of Artificial/Super Intelligence.
But that’s just the thing: Roadster is not meant to be some shareholder dream; it’s meant to be a vehicle that people buy just because it is something awesome, unique, and the first of its kind.
Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds
Musk had to remind those who are skeptical about the Roadster’s importance to the company mission that while it is not a major contributor to Tesla’s long-term goals, it is something that is being built just because it can be:
“Optimus and Cybercab will be the vast majority of Tesla’s value. The only things that will scale to incredible size (K2 and beyond) economically are super intelligence, robots, solar power, and mass to space. And, of course, if you have the first two, the rest will follow. But Roadster is super cool, so we’re doing it anyway.”
Musk has said on many occasions that Optimus would be the project that would make up the vast majority of Tesla’s value in the coming years.
Robotics will be a major focus of Tesla over the coming years, especially as Musk believes Optimus will enable work to be optional for humans and will enable what he calls “High Universal Income.”
Optimus and Cybercab will be the vast majority of Tesla’s value.
The only things that will scale to incredible size (K2 and beyond) economically are super intelligence, robots, solar power and mass to space.
And, of course, if you have the first two, the rest will follow.
But Roadster is super cool, so we’re doing it anyway.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 18, 2026
Cybercab will be a passive income opportunity for owners, Musk and Tesla have said for a very long time, as a fleet of self-driving vehicles will operate within a ride-hailing Robotaxi service that won’t require a human driver to be present.
Tesla investors are more than enthusiastic about the company’s future projects, at least from a general consensus perspective. However, it is important to note that the Roadster is a fun and cool project that pushes the boundaries of what people thought was possible for an automobile.
What we saw last week was the first true example of a flying car, and despite the backlash about how it might not contribute to Tesla’s grand ambitions, it’s okay to have fun sometimes, too.
Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027
Elon Musk reveals why Boring Co’s biggest East Coast project never happened
Tesla CEO Elon Musk reminds everyone about Roadster’s true meaning
SpaceX reveals how its 1 Million AI satellite network will work and prevent space collisions
Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds
