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SpaceX’s Starship Moon lander under fire yet again as Blue Origin sues NASA
Less than three weeks after the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) categorically denied protests from Blue Origin and Dynetics over NASA’s decision to award SpaceX a Moon lander development contract, the former company has sued the space agency.
First reported by The Verge, Blue Origin filed its lawsuit against NASA with the US Court of Federal Claims on Monday, August 16th and continues to spout the same kind of rhetoric that GAO wholeheartedly refuted on July 30th. Namely, the office explicitly upheld the procurement process and reasoning behind NASA’s decision to award SpaceX – and SpaceX alone – a contract to develop a crewed Moon lander.
Thus far, the central argument put forth by Blue Origin and Dynetics is that NASA effectively invalidated the entire Human Landing System (HLS) “Option A” procurement when it didn’t award two HLS development contracts. Option A refers to a limited portion of the HLS program focused on funding the development of crewed Moon landers and the completion of two crucial flight tests – one uncrewed and one with NASA astronauts aboard.
Program-wise, HLS is quite similar to NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which began as a series of smaller contracts focused on capability demonstrations that culminated in a major competition to ferry NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). Ultimately, NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX and the rest is now history (SpaceX flourished; Boeing floundered) and despite unsurprising delays, the program has been an extraordinary success and a financial bargain.
As part of the major Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contracts SpaceX and Boeing won, both companies were tasked with designed, building, and qualifying crewed spacecraft to NASA specifications. The centerpiece of those contracts was a pair of full-up demonstration flights to and from the ISS – one uncrewed and the other with two NASA astronauts. NASA then separately purchased “post-certification missions” – operational crew transport flights – from both companies a few years into development.
The corollaries between Commercial Crew and HLS are clear and unsurprising. However, unlike the Commercial Crew Program, NASA has been able to structure HLS with the benefits of hindsight. This time around, already faced with a Congressional funding shortfall even worse than years of half-funding that directly delayed CCtCap, NASA used a different procurement ‘vessel’ for HLS and repeatedly warned competitors that while it wanted two Moon lander providers, the ability to award two contracts would be entirely dependent on funding availability.
In other words, NASA had learned an important lesson from the Commercial Crew Program and wasn’t about to trap itself with contractual obligations that far outmatched recent Congressional funding trends. Intentionally or not, NASA structured HLS in such a way that it only awarded major Option A lander contracts after Congress had already appropriated its FY2021 funding. As it turned out, Congress ultimately provided a pathetic 25% of the full $3.4 billion NASA had requested, leaving the agency no choice but to downselect to just a single provider – SpaceX. Put simply, NASA has assumed that Congress will continue to supply just a tiny fraction of the funding it would need to develop two landers on time and SpaceX’s Starship proposal was just cheap enough to make any Option A award possible.
The fixed-price 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, the Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) vehicle NASA used for its HLS Option A procurement also strictly allows 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.
Tesla has expanded its branded ‘For Business’ Supercharger program that it launched last year, as yet another company is using the platform to attract EV owners to its business and utilize a unique advertising opportunity.
Francis Energy of Oklahoma is launching four Superchargers in Norman, where the University of Oklahoma is located. The Superchargers, which are fitted with branding for Francis Energy, will officially open tomorrow.
It will not be the final Supercharger location that Francis Energy plans to open, the company confirmed to EVWire.
Back in early September, Tesla launched the new “Supercharger for Business” program in an effort to give businesses the ability to offer EV charging at custom rates. It would give their businesses visibility and would also cater to employees or customers.
“Purchase and install Superchargers at your business,” Tesla wrote on a page on its website for the new program. “Superchargers are compatible with all electric vehicles, bringing EV drivers to your business by offering convenient, reliable charging.”
The first site opened in Land O’ Lakes, Florida, which is Northeast of Tampa, as a company called Suncoast launched the Superchargers for local EV owners.
Tesla launches its new branded Supercharger for Business with first active station
The program also does a great job at expanding infrastructure for EV owners, which is something that needs to be done to encourage more people to purchase Teslas and other electric cars.
Francis Energy operates at least 14 EV charging locations in Oklahoma, spanning from Durant to Oklahoma City and nearly everywhere in between. Filings from the company, listed by Supercharge.info, show the company’s plans to convert some of them to Tesla Superchargers, potentially utilizing the new Supercharger for Business program to advertise.
Moving forward, more companies will likely utilize Tesla’s Supercharger for Business program as it presents major advantages in a variety of ways, especially with advertising and creating a place for EV drivers to gain range in their cars.
Tesla Cybercab is perhaps the most highly-anticipated project that the company plans to roll out this year, and as it is undergoing its testing phase in pre-production currently, there are some things to work through with it.
Over the weekend, an image of the Cybercab being loaded onto a tow truck started circulating on the internet, and people began to speculate as to what the issue could be.
Hmmmmmm… https://t.co/L5hWcOXQkb pic.twitter.com/OJBDyHNTMj
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 11, 2026
The Cybercab can clearly be seen with a Police Officer and perhaps the tow truck driver by its side, being loaded onto, or even potentially unloaded from, the truck.
However, it seems unlikely it was being offloaded, as its operation would get it to this point for testing to begin with.
It appears, at first glance, that it needs assistance getting back to wherever it came from; likely Gigafactory Texas or potentially a Bay Area facility.
The Cybercab was also spotted in Buffalo, New York, last week, potentially undergoing cold-weather testing, but it doesn’t appear that’s where this incident took place.
It is important to remember that the Cybercab is currently undergoing some rigorous testing scenarios, which include range tests and routine public road operation. These things help Tesla assess any potential issue the vehicle could run into after it starts routine production and heads to customers, or for the Robotaxi platform operation.
This is not a one-off issue, either. Tesla had some instances with the Semi where it was seen broken down on the side of a highway three years ago. The all-electric Semi has gone on to be successful in its early pilot program, as companies like Frito-Lay and PepsiCo. have had very positive remarks.
The Cybercab’s future is bright, and it is important to note that no vehicle model has ever gone its full life without a breakdown. It happens, it’s a car.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that there has been no official word on what happened with this particular Cybercab unit, but it is crucial to remember that this is the pre-production testing phase, and these things are more constructive than anything.
Tesla analyst Andrew Percoco of Morgan Stanley teased the company’s dominance in its self-driving initiative, stating that its lead over competitors is “not even close.”
Percoco recently overtook coverage of Tesla stock from Adam Jonas, who had covered the company at Morgan Stanley for years. Percoco is handling Tesla now that Jonas is covering embodied AI stocks and no longer automotive.
His first move after grabbing coverage was to adjust the price target from $410 to $425, as well as the rating from ‘Overweight’ to ‘Equal Weight.’
Percoco’s new note regarding Tesla highlights the company’s extensive lead in self-driving and autonomy projects, something that it has plenty of competition in, but has established its prowess over the past few years.
He writes:
“It’s not even close. Tesla continues to lead in autonomous driving, even as Nvidia rolls out new technology aimed at helping other automakers build driverless systems.”
Percoco’s main point regarding Tesla’s advantage is the company’s ability to collect large amounts of training data through its massive fleet, as millions of cars are driving throughout the world and gathering millions of miles of vehicle behavior on the road.
This is the main point that Percoco makes regarding Tesla’s lead in the entire autonomy sector: data is King, and Tesla has the most of it.
One big story that has hit the news over the past week is that of NVIDIA and its own self-driving suite, called Alpamayo. NVIDIA launched this open-source AI program last week, but it differs from Tesla’s in a significant fashion, especially from a hardware perspective, as it plans to use a combination of LiDAR, Radar, and Vision (Cameras) to operate.
Percoco said that NVIDIA’s announcement does not impact Morgan Stanley’s long-term opinions on Tesla and its strength or prowess in self-driving.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang commends Tesla’s Elon Musk for early belief
And, for what it’s worth, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang even said some remarkable things about Tesla following the launch of Alpamayo:
“I think the Tesla stack is the most advanced autonomous vehicle stack in the world. I’m fairly certain they were already using end-to-end AI. Whether their AI did reasoning or not is somewhat secondary to that first part.”
Percoco reiterated both the $425 price target and the ‘Equal Weight’ rating on Tesla shares.
Tesla expands its branded ‘For Business’ Superchargers
Tesla Cybercab ‘breakdown’ image likely is not what it seems
