NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

(www.cnn.com)

404 points voxleone | 1 comments | 21 Oct 25 12:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.21s | source

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cheschire ◴[21 Oct 25 13:21 UTC] No.45655449[source]▶

I love how government acquisitions works. A company can fail to deliver the final product, then use the recompete process to win a higher paying contract by using the progress they already made on the previous contract to demonstrate a performance level above their competitors.

Whereas all the competition has to use their own R&D budget to show capability to meet the requirements of the second contract, the winner of the first contract used the government's R&D money to be competitive.

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FrustratedMonky ◴[21 Oct 25 13:28 UTC] No.45655537[source]▶

>>45655449 #

Everyone hates on the Government. But that describes every competitive bid process used by many corporations.

Any company can do that to another company.

Welcome to Capitalism. Just because it is a government contract doesn't by default mean it is Socialism.

And, of course they can re-bid. Just like every other corporation does.

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1. cheschire ◴[21 Oct 25 13:37 UTC] No.45655661[source]▶

>>45655537 #

I didn't imply socialism. It's probably my fault you inferred it though as I'm blissfully ignorant of whatever the current echoes are these days that get people chirping in a specific direction.

No I'm just assuming SpaceX will win the recompetition and complaining about that future event.

And no, it doesn't need to be an "of course they can" inevitability. The rules of competition define what can and can't happen. If the rules of this competition allow a rebid, then that is a conscious decision. Rules / laws could be changed to disallow rebidding on follow-on contracts if there was a failure to deliver on the first one.

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