NASA Picks Bezos' Blue Origin To Build Moon Lander

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May 20, 2023

Image copyright: Wikimedia Commonsstory last updated May 20, 2023

The Facts

On Friday, the US space agency NASA announced it had awarded a $3.4B contract to Jeff Bezos' rocket company Blue Origin to build a lunar lander for its Artemis program scheduled to launch in 2029.
The contract requires Blue Origin to conduct an uncrewed demonstration flight to the Moon prior to the launch, followed by a crewed voyage that would take astronauts for "about a weeklong trip to the Moon's South Pole region."

The Spin

Pro-establishment narrative

NASA is on course to return astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972, including the first woman. As part of a long-term plan for a Moon-to-Mars exploration in the next 20 years, the Artemis project is an exciting test to see how close humanity is to reaching much further than the Moon in the decades to come. The Moon's proximity to Earth makes it a great testbed of technologies required for deep space exploration.

Wired

Establishment-critical narrative

While it may argue a Moon platform will teach humanity how to stay alive longer and go farther, in reality, all NASA's Artemis Moon Mission will do is protect the budgets of its contractors. Although it's a colossal waste of taxpayers' money, which has little to no direct impact on everyday Americans' lives, the agency is playing for wider public support by dangling the promise of groundbreaking advances with minorities crewing future missions.

CNET

Cynical narrative

There is a difference between exploration, colonization, and commercialization. NASA's Moon Mission is just another form of government-subsidized capitalism to share the control of a potential mining outpost in space with billionaires. There is officially a new Moon race, which raises tricky questions about who owns lunar resources.