Let's fly the first black woman to the moon, but send the checks to Jeff Bezos!
On the congressional hustle that perfectly captures 2022 America...
In a story that shows how hard it is to deter a billionaire ravenous for public money, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and The Washington Post fame appears to have prevailed upon buddies in the Senate to keep alive a childhood dream of not only going to the moon, but getting the public to pay for it. A Bezos company officially lost this moon contract three times in less than a year, but the fourth time’s a charm: thanks to congress, his Jason Voorhees-like determination may be rewarded with a contract worth $6 billion or more.
On March 28th, Joe Biden released his fiscal year 2023 budget, which despite eyebrow-raising changes — in particular, a 10% increase in defense spending — generated few headlines. One of the few items the press did cover was this passage:
The Budget provides $7.5 billion, $1.1 billion above the 2021 enacted level, for Artemis lunar exploration. Artemis would return American astronauts to the Moon as early as 2025, land the first woman and person of color on the Moon…
It was unclear if the budget language was describing one person, or two, or more (headline writers seemed confused on that front as well). Still, the FY 2023 budget merely put into writing what NASA announced last year, and what’s been the buzz on the Hill for a while: that the space agency’s next big goal is to put a black woman on the moon. “The Apollo generation,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in March, “has passed the torch.”
A lofty enough goal, but then there was the fine print. Much as the military once replaced cheap army cafeteria food with Cinnabon franchises and high-cost meals prepared by firms like KBR, and the NIH basically exists to provide free R&D to pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, NASA no longer builds much for itself. Instead, it’s lately become little more than a vehicle for funding the phallic moon race between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos-owned Blue Origin.
The feud between the two billionaires began years ago, when congress funded the solicitation of three private commercial proposals for the next moon landing, including one from SpaceX, one from Blue Origin, and a third from a company called Dynetics located in Senator Richard Shelby’s home state of Alabama. Last April, Musk and SpaceX appeared to come out on top after NASA declared SpaceX the winner of a $2.9 billion contract to build the spacecraft that would deliver the next NASA astronauts to the lunar surface. Bezos’s Blue Origin had submitted a bid roughly twice that size.
When NASA rejected his $5.9 billion bid, Bezos went ape. He fought back in multiple ways. Among the first moves was he and Blue Origin filing a 175-page complaint with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), asserting that NASA had “moved the goalposts at the last minute” by picking just one company’s lunar landing plan. It was expected that NASA would pick two firms, but decided on SpaceX only because of “short funding.” Essentially, Bezos was complaining that he’d submitted a higher bid than he needed to because he expected that NASA would be spending more money. Now that he knew he actually needed to watch costs, he sought a chance to submit a more taxpayer-friendly proposal.
Lest anyone think I’m joking about the phallic aspect of this competition, check out the Twitter response from Musk to Bezos’s GAO complaint:
For years now, Musk and Bezos have provided ample material for America’s fading late-night TV comedy scene with their private space-dong race. When glimpses of Musk’s “Big ****ing Rocket” (BFR) space-tourism vehicle reached the public, Twitter exploded with cheering comments from Musk fans like “It looks like a dick with fins!” and “Chief, that looks like a $500 dildo.”
When Bezos soon after went to the heavens in a private vessel, he did so in a rocket that was 18 meters tall, but somehow looked exactly five and one quarter inches high and appeared to have a metal glans. This prompted an onslaught of abusive tweets, Dr. Evil jokes, and chuckling headlines. (Click on Mashable’s “A small replica of Jeff Bezos’ penis-shaped rocket can be yours for $69” for a very amusing photo.) It was difficult to find TV coverage of the Bezos space jaunt that didn’t involve uncontrolled laughter.
On the congressional hustle that perfectly captures 2022 America...
In a story that shows how hard it is to deter a billionaire ravenous for public money, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and The Washington Post fame appears to have prevailed upon buddies in the Senate to keep alive a childhood dream of not only going to the moon, but getting the public to pay for it. A Bezos company officially lost this moon contract three times in less than a year, but the fourth time’s a charm: thanks to congress, his Jason Voorhees-like determination may be rewarded with a contract worth $6 billion or more.
On March 28th, Joe Biden released his fiscal year 2023 budget, which despite eyebrow-raising changes — in particular, a 10% increase in defense spending — generated few headlines. One of the few items the press did cover was this passage:
The Budget provides $7.5 billion, $1.1 billion above the 2021 enacted level, for Artemis lunar exploration. Artemis would return American astronauts to the Moon as early as 2025, land the first woman and person of color on the Moon…
It was unclear if the budget language was describing one person, or two, or more (headline writers seemed confused on that front as well). Still, the FY 2023 budget merely put into writing what NASA announced last year, and what’s been the buzz on the Hill for a while: that the space agency’s next big goal is to put a black woman on the moon. “The Apollo generation,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in March, “has passed the torch.”
A lofty enough goal, but then there was the fine print. Much as the military once replaced cheap army cafeteria food with Cinnabon franchises and high-cost meals prepared by firms like KBR, and the NIH basically exists to provide free R&D to pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, NASA no longer builds much for itself. Instead, it’s lately become little more than a vehicle for funding the phallic moon race between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos-owned Blue Origin.
The feud between the two billionaires began years ago, when congress funded the solicitation of three private commercial proposals for the next moon landing, including one from SpaceX, one from Blue Origin, and a third from a company called Dynetics located in Senator Richard Shelby’s home state of Alabama. Last April, Musk and SpaceX appeared to come out on top after NASA declared SpaceX the winner of a $2.9 billion contract to build the spacecraft that would deliver the next NASA astronauts to the lunar surface. Bezos’s Blue Origin had submitted a bid roughly twice that size.
When NASA rejected his $5.9 billion bid, Bezos went ape. He fought back in multiple ways. Among the first moves was he and Blue Origin filing a 175-page complaint with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), asserting that NASA had “moved the goalposts at the last minute” by picking just one company’s lunar landing plan. It was expected that NASA would pick two firms, but decided on SpaceX only because of “short funding.” Essentially, Bezos was complaining that he’d submitted a higher bid than he needed to because he expected that NASA would be spending more money. Now that he knew he actually needed to watch costs, he sought a chance to submit a more taxpayer-friendly proposal.
Lest anyone think I’m joking about the phallic aspect of this competition, check out the Twitter response from Musk to Bezos’s GAO complaint:
For years now, Musk and Bezos have provided ample material for America’s fading late-night TV comedy scene with their private space-dong race. When glimpses of Musk’s “Big ****ing Rocket” (BFR) space-tourism vehicle reached the public, Twitter exploded with cheering comments from Musk fans like “It looks like a dick with fins!” and “Chief, that looks like a $500 dildo.”
When Bezos soon after went to the heavens in a private vessel, he did so in a rocket that was 18 meters tall, but somehow looked exactly five and one quarter inches high and appeared to have a metal glans. This prompted an onslaught of abusive tweets, Dr. Evil jokes, and chuckling headlines. (Click on Mashable’s “A small replica of Jeff Bezos’ penis-shaped rocket can be yours for $69” for a very amusing photo.) It was difficult to find TV coverage of the Bezos space jaunt that didn’t involve uncontrolled laughter.