Elon Musk’s SpaceX is on a roll. The company is preparing for the fifth flight test of the Starship, in which it is hoped that the Mechazilla arms will catch the Super Heavy first stage and bring it down to a soft landing.
SpaceX has an almost billion-dollar contract to bring down the International Space Station safely into the ocean. Bloomberg reports that SpaceX may sell shares in the company to insider investors that would give it a value of about $200 billion.
However, to use that phrase from “Die Hard,” Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin company aspires to be a competitor to SpaceX, is trying to be a fly in the ointment, a monkey in the wrench, a pain in the backside where Elon Musk’s long-term plans are concerned.
Bezos has filed a complaint with the FAA seeking to curb Starship launches from the Kennedy Space Center, which Musk plans to do once the giant rocket is operational. Bezos’s excuse is that launching too many Starships would be bad for the environment.
This is not the first time that Bezos has launched a lawfare attack on SpaceX. He petitioned the General Accounting Office to overturn NASA’s awarding of the Human Landing System contract to Musk’s company. When the GAO turned the petition down, Bezos sued in federal court. The court eventually dismissed the lawsuit.
Musk seems to be more amused than angry with Bezos. He posted on his social media platform X that Blue Origin should be named “Sue Origin.”
Bezos has received some mocking in parts of the media already. Hot Air noted that the Blue Origin CEO may be suffering from a little bit of rocket envy. To put the matter delicately, SpaceX has grown from a small, upstart company to a bemouth that dominates the launch market. The Starship promises to open up the moon, Mars and beyond to human exploration and eventually settlement. The Starlink satellite cluster has revolutionized telecommunications.
By contrast, Blue Origin has managed a number of suborbital joy rides with its New Shepard rocket. The orbital New Glenn, Bezos’ answer to the Falcon Heavy, is almost ready to fly, but is years behind SpaceX. NASA has selected Blue Origin’s Blue Moon for the second Human Landing System vehicle, but the lunar lander version of the Starship is way ahead in development and offers much more capability.
Despite having deep pockets and access to engineering talent, Bezos has failed to make Blue Origin into the cutting edge, entrepreneurial company that can change the face of space launches in the way that SpaceX has become. While SpaceX has raced ahead, Blue Origin has plodded slowly.
Bezos’ approach seems to be that if he can’t catch up with SpaceX with engineering, at least he can slow it down with lawyering, He is likely not so much concerned about the effect Starship will have on the environment as he is about the enormous rocket ship’s effect on his bottom line.
Bezos’ effort to slow SpaceX down with lawfare is likely to be as successful as the last time he did it. Also, recent events may make that kind of legal gambit more difficult.
The Supreme Court struck down a 1984 ruling known as the Chevron Deference that gave regulatory agencies broad powers to interpret the laws that they were charged with administering. The 1984 decision led to the rise of what some people call the administrative state, in which regulators were granted the power, in effect, to govern every aspect of life in the U.S.
The new decision, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, explained by law professor Glenn Reynolds, returns the power to interpret laws to the courts. The ruling, in regards to the Bezos lawfare gambit, means that if the FAA were to accede to his demands and limit the number of launches SpaceX could mount from Florida, Elon Musk would have a better chance of getting that decision overturned in the courts.
What effect the new ruling might have on SpaceX’s Starship test program in Boca Chica, Texas is unclear. Government regulators have stymied tests of the rocket that promises to revolutionize space travel, adding months between flight tests. Congress should get busy with passing laws that unambiguously govern rocket launches, balancing environmental concerns with the needs of space travel.
And Jeff Bezos should stop the lawfare and start developing his own rockets, competing with SpaceX fairly.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and, most recently, “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.