Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to news on October 22, NASA is the most important customer of Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX, which has awarded a total of nearly $12 billion in contracts. However, the relationship between the partners has become increasingly strained because of SpaceX's delay in building critical equipment for NASA's next moon landing.

In recent months, NASA officials have raised concerns with SpaceX executives that the company could miss a deadline worth more than $4 billion to develop a manned lunar lander (HLS) and fail to meet a $53 million technical contract to fuel manned lunar spacecraft, according to people familiar with the matter. In addition, the two sides are in dispute over budget issues, including SpaceX's use of NASA funds for sideline activities outside the contract.

This is not the first time tensions have emerged between SpaceX and NASA, nor is it serious enough to undermine cooperation, people familiar with the matter said. And even if NASA wants to abandon SpaceX, it won't be able to easily find a replacement because it relies heavily on SpaceX, which has become the best commercial launch service provider in the world. But eventually SpaceX may face tougher competition, such as Blue Origin, a rocket start-up owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, which could make it easier for NASA to transfer business to other contractors.

For now, however, the two sides are still in a state of symbiosis. For NASA, SpaceX has become a key partner in sending cargo into space and is currently the only option for sending astronauts into space. In the early days of SpaceX, NASA was the lifeline of its business. In 2008, NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract to deliver supplies to the International Space Station, when the startup was on the brink of bankruptcy.

NASA said it had awarded nearly $12 billion in contracts to SpaceX since 2008, helping SpaceX become one of the most highly valued start-ups in the world, valued at $150 billion. Although SpaceX did not disclose its financial position, the company reported revenue of $4.6 billion in 2022. In the same year, SpaceX won a contract worth $2 billion from NASA, according to federal records. This accounts for more than 40 per cent of the company's annual revenue, but it is unclear whether SpaceX will include all NASA funds in 2022.

"it's absolutely certain that NASA is its main customer, if not SpaceX's biggest customer, and SpaceX is very dependent on this customer," said Phil Smith, an aerospace industry analyst at BryceTech. "

The tension between NASA and SpaceX is related to their most ambitious cooperation to date, the return of Artemis to the moon. This is a complex operation, including sending astronauts to the NASA-designed Orion spacecraft and transferring them to SpaceX's manned landing system, which will take the astronauts to and from the lunar surface. SpaceX's manned landing system is an improved version of Starship, a giant rocket + spacecraft system at an altitude of more than 120m, and SpaceX is still under development.

Musk said SpaceX has high hopes for starships, which will help improve the quality of its chain of satellite Internet services and eventually send humans to Mars.

But SpaceX still has a lot of work to do in starship development and testing. In April this year, SpaceX made its first test flight of the starship, resulting in an explosion. As the company is waiting for approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the timing of its next test launch has not yet been determined. Last week, SpaceX executive William Gerstenmeier (William Gerstenmaier) testified to Congress, calling on the federal government to reform FAA test launch licensing procedures, which he said was the main reason for the delay in the progress of the starship program.

"this will eventually slow down our support for NASA," says Mr Gerstenmeier. He also acknowledged that SpaceX also had some technical hurdles to overcome when launching starships.

SpaceX has devoted most of its engineering resources to launching starships and has assigned only a small number of staff to develop a lunar manned landing system, according to people familiar with the matter. This led many SpaceX employees to believe that the company's leadership did not make lunar manned landers a priority.

Jim Free, deputy director of NASA, said at a news conference in August that SpaceX's first lunar mission was Artemis III, which is currently planned for 2025, but the delay in the starship meant that NASA was unlikely to proceed as planned. "SpaceX needs to launch starships many times, not only for us, but also for themselves," he said. "then they need to launch more for us."

Mr. Fry said NASA had been working closely with SpaceX to get the latest timetable, but he declined to give a specific date. "We are really trying to understand the details of the timetable, because when we set a date, whether it's December 2025 or whatever, we want our team to be confident," he said. we all have a practical way to achieve this goal. "

After the starship can fly reliably, SpaceX then needs to prove to NASA that it can transfer 10 tons of liquid oxygen between the starship's fuel tanks. This is part of the $53 million contract signed between SpaceX and NASA and is an important part of the "Tpping Point" project.

Demonstration fuel transfer is critical to the manned landing system project. SpaceX plans to launch several starships into space to prepare enough fuel for the system to reach the moon from low-Earth orbit, which is almost 1000 times farther from Earth than the International Space Station.

NASA officials have publicly expressed concern that SpaceX could delay a mission to the moon. Fry said in August that delays in the latter had hampered other parts of the Artemis mission as NASA's Orion spacecraft and the spacesuit being developed by Axiom were designed to dock with starships.

Another Artemis project being undertaken by SpaceX is a $2.89 billion contract to build a lunar manned landing system. It will first make a test flight, then take the NASA astronauts to the surface of the moon and return. In November 2022, NASA revised its contract with SpaceX to replace the second starship flight to send astronauts to the moon on the Artemis IV mission, a change that added $1.15 billion to SpaceX's Artemis contract with the agency.

Currently, NASA does not have much choice but to work with SpaceX to complete the original Artemis mission. However, in the long run, the situation in which SpaceX dominates NASA contracts may change. In March, NASA awarded Blue Origin a $3.4 billion contract to build a manned landing system for the Artemis V moon landing mission scheduled for 2029.

"this competitive approach helps promote innovation, reduce costs, and invest in commercial capacity to serve other customers and promote the moon's economy," Lisa Watson-Lisa Watson-Morgan, project manager for NASA manned landing systems, said in a statement.

Smith also said that once Blue Origin proves its strength, "the two companies will compete in future manned landing system missions."

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