A U.S. Senate proposal tied to the NASA spending bill may thwart efforts by Elon Musk's space venture while aiding Boeing Co. (BA), the government's No. 2 contractor, a trade group president said today.The seven-line provision would require companies seeking contracts to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station to file detailed financial reports justifying their costs. The Senate bill for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 includes $805 million for the program.
The art of Weasel wording contracts to exclude competitors is alive and well. And is the program going to produce $805 million or more in savings? Ha!
Newer contractors such as Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin LLC will be at a disadvantage, Michael Lopez-Alegria, president of the Washington-based Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The measure would increase their costs because they would have to expand accounting staffs to do the work, he said.
The smaller companies don't have "quite the army in place to do those calculations," while Boeing is probably "best equipped" because it's so large, he said.
The space organization represents companies such as Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX and Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin. Boeing, which is also competing for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's commercial crew program, isn't a member of the federation.