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Blue Origin lawsuit forces SpaceX, NASA to stop joint work on Starship Moon lander

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5 years ago

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Days after Jeff Bezos space startup Blue Origin sued NASA over its decision to solely award SpaceX a contract to turn Starship into a Moon lander, it’s become clear that the space agency will again have to freeze work on the program.

Earlier this week, it was reported that Blue Origin had made good on a veiled threat to sue NASA over disagreements over the space agency’s latest Human Landing System (HLS) procurement decisions. Namely, NASA decided not to proceed with Blue Origin’s National Team Moon lander proposal, which was twice as expensive as SpaceX’s Starship proposal, less technically sound, and promised significantly less cost-sharing.

SpaceX, on the other hand, proposed to turn Starship into a safe, crew-rated, reusable Moon lander for about the same cost as Blue Origin’s proposal price: $6 billion, give or take. However, NASA says that the company offered to pay for more than half of the Starship Moon lander’s development, lowering NASA’s actual cost to just $2.9 billion. Coincidentally or not, $2.9 billion – with some minor concessions on when that funding would be dispersed to the HLS winner – would end up being almost exactly what NASA could afford over the program’s four to five-year lifespan.

As previously discussed on Teslarati, NASA repeatedly and explicitly warned all three HLS Option A competitors (SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics) that it withheld the ability to award as many or as few contracts as it wanted – including none at all. Ultimately, exactly as it had cautioned, NASA weighed the three proposals it received against its existing budget (a middling $850M of $3.4B requested in FY21) and selected just one – a proposal from SpaceX that was conveniently both the cheapest and most technically sound.

“The fixed-price [Starship] contract will cost NASA $2.9B over four or so years – narrowly within the space agency’s reach if Congress continues to appropriate around $850M annually ($3.4B over four years). The numbers are very simple. As GAO notes [in its protest denial], the Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) tool NASA used for its HLS Option A acquisition also explicitly allowed the agency to select as many or as few proposals as it wants, including none at all. In the lead-up to proposal submission, official NASA documents repeatedly cautioned as much, warning that the agency might not even award one contract depending on funding or the quality of proposals it received.

For Blue Origin’s lawsuit to succeed, the increasingly desperate company will have to convince a federal judge that basic realities and longstanding precedents of federal procurement – not just NASA’s HLS award to SpaceX – are flawed and need to be changed. The odds of success are thus spectacularly low. However, if the presiding judge allows the case to proceed and awards Blue Origin an injunction against NASA, it could force the space agency to cease work on SpaceX’s HLS contract for months and potentially freeze SpaceX’s access to the $300M NASA recently disbursed.”

Teslarati.com — August 16th, 2021

Unfortunately, just as speculated, Blue Origin’s lawsuit appears to have found just enough footing to disrupt the HLS program yet again. Thanks to the first protests of Blue Origin and Dynetics, NASA and SpaceX were forced to stop cooperative work on the Starship Moon lander for more than three months. Now, on August 19th, NASA reportedly “voluntarily paused” work on SpaceX’s HLS Moon lander contract and will continue to do so until November 1st – potentially adding another ~74 days to the 95-day delay Blue Origin’s meddling has already partially caused.

On its own, the announcement is already fairly bizarre. For unknown reasons, Blue Origin apparently agreed to “an expedited litigation schedule” in return for NASA voluntarily pausing work on SpaceX’s HLS contract. It’s unclear why any plaintiff that believes it has a strong case would allow an artificial limit to be placed on the amount of time available for litigation, but that’s exactly what Blue Origin has agreed to.

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Per that “expedited schedule,” NASA’s voluntary work halt will end on November 1st after several scheduled rounds of motions and cross-motions from Blue Origin, SpaceX, and the space agency. It’s unclear when a ruling might be expected but the schedule published seems to imply that it would come sometime before NASA and SpaceX resume work.

It’s now increasingly likely that being forced to spend more than five months without the ability to seriously work or collaborate with SpaceX on its HLS contract will significantly delay NASA’s necessary contributions and thus humanity’s return to the Moon. Thankfully, as was the case with the initial 95-day delay caused by contract protests, no part of Blue Origin’s lawsuit will prevent SpaceX itself from continuing to develop Starship, though it almost certainly hampers the company’s ability to mature its Starship Moon lander design.

In the meantime, while Blue Origin busies itself with a general determination to disrupt NASA’s return to the Moon until it receives a slice of the pie its executives and owner feel entitled to, SpaceX will simply continue a full-court press towards Starship’s orbital launch debut and focus on building, testing, flying, and rebuilding the hardware that will return humanity to the Moon and, just maybe, revolutionize spaceflight as we know it.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla Model Y L’s new features flexed at unveiling event at Diner

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2 hours ago

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July 31, 2026

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Tesla Model Y L in a field
Credit: Tesla

Tesla flexed the new features of the Model Y L with a dedicated media event at the company’s Diner on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.

The Model Y L is the extended-wheelbase version of the all-electric crossover, which has been voted the best-selling car in the world on three occasions. The vehicle is already rolling off production lines at Gigafactory Texas, and first deliveries are slated to take place later this year.

Tesla brings Model Y L ‘Launch Series’ to the U.S. at $61,990

Teslarati was invited to the event, but due to some scheduling conflicts, we could not make it to Los Angeles. Instead, we will have our hands on a media unit sometime in August, so we’ll be able to spend some more extended time with the Model Y L.

However, plenty of those who made it to LA shared some cool features that set the Model Y L apart from the Model Y.

Multi-Row Climate Control

Tesla fitted the Model Y L with full climate control on all three rows on the front screen. It can be adjusted by selecting which row you’d like to modify on the right-hand side of the touch screen:

Better Rear Window Visibility

One of the strangest things about the Model Y, especially the Juniper iteration, is the rear window has extremely limited visibility when looking into the rearview mirror.

Tesla has improved upon this with the Model Y L:

PowerShare will be included

Model Y L will come with PowerShare in North America, with an 11.5kW output to your home. Tesla said it would require Powerwall 3 for operation.

Wireless Charging Pad

There has been some speculation that Tesla would upgrade the wireless charging pads in the United States, but this is not the case.

Tesla owner fixes common feature complaint with crafty DIY retrofit

Tesla confirmed that it does not come with the cooled pads as the Y L in China does. This is because North America has not adopted Qi charging yet.

Thermal Management Improvements

These improvements in the Model Y L were seen with thermal management:

  • Up to 15% faster cabin cooling
  • +23% thermal efficiency gained in hot weather, 7 miles of real-world range gained
  • 8x more solar energy reflection off of glass roof
  • 30% reduction in solar energy entering the cabin

Demand

Tesla said the Model Y L is almost sold out in the U.S. It comes with

  • 1 year of FSD Supervised
  • 1 year of Supercharging
  • 1 year of Premium Connectivity
  • Free exterior paint color, interior, and wheel option at no additional cost
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Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk denies ridiculous Gigafactory Shanghai rumor

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4 hours ago

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July 31, 2026

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(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to his social media platform X on Thursday night to deny a ridiculous rumor regarding the sale of the company’s Chinese vehicle production plant, Gigafactory Shanghai.

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter, claimed in a scathing new report that Tesla was exploring a potential sale of the entire China business in an effort to help bolster a potential merger between SpaceX and Tesla.

Musk immediately denied the rumor not once but twice, initially calling it “fake news,” and then calling it “absurdly fake news” in a separate post just a few moments later:

The original poster of the Wall Street Journal article that Musk saw deleted the initial post sharing the headline and the rumored sale of Tesla’s China business.

The report seemed absolutely and unequivocally false to begin with; Tesla’s business in China is among the most important pieces of the company’s business. Not only does the factory supply vehicles for the domestic market, but also for various other markets in Asia and Europe.

China is also one of the largest automotive markets in the world, and Tesla has performed well there despite the robust competition.

The speculation regarding a Tesla and SpaceX merger has started to gain steam this year as the space exploration company went public just a month ago. There has been speculation that Musk will bridge all of his companies under one “umbrella company,” and analysts believe this could happen before the end of the decade.

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

This is the latest iteration of Musk’s very evident war on mainstream media. Reports regarding any of Musk’s companies are quick to get the dreaded “false” or “fake news” response from the CEO when they are unfounded.

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Elon Musk

Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get

Tesla’s Optimus chief corrected himself on X, confirming a staggering 10 million robot production target.

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12 hours ago

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July 31, 2026

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Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]

Tesla’s Optimus program has a new number attached to it, after Ashok Elluswamy, the executive who has run the humanoid robot program since June 2025, posted a three word correction on X Thursday, “Correction, 10 million robots.”

The line clarifies the long term annual capacity Tesla is building toward its planned second Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas, a figure Musk has cited repeatedly since last year’s shareholder meeting.

The scale is worth noting, because ten million robots a year would mean Tesla building more units annually than most countries sell in new cars. Tesla has framed this as a second line, not the first. The buildout is happening in two phases: a roughly one million unit per year line inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, installed on the floor space vacated when Model S and Model X production ended earlier this year, and a much larger dedicated facility under construction at Giga Texas that broke ground on its first steel structure in May. That Texas facility is the one Elluswamy’s correction refers to, and is expected to reach volume production sometime in 2027.

Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress

Elluswamy took over Optimus from Milan Kovac last summer and has spent the months since talking up the program’s trajectory. Elon Musk has also floated the ten million figure at Tesla’s 2025 shareholder meeting.

Ending Model S and Model X production to make room for the first Optimus line was one of the more consequential manufacturing decisions in the company’s recent history, retiring two flagship vehicles in favor of a robot that has yet to enter mass production. Musk has previously estimated per unit production costs at $20,000 to $25,000 once Tesla reaches a million units a year, though he hasn’t said what that cost looks like at ten times the volume.

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