Blue Origin has just unveiled the latest design for its NASA lunar lander – and we can't help but feel that it's visually degraded from the gorgeous renderings the company initially showed in 2019.
In a social media post last week, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos showed off their latest model, called Blue Moon Mark 1, a shiny, towering structure that looks very different from the company's original vision.
Nelson says the visit to the blueorigin Huntsville engine production plant was impressive!
NASA is proud to partner with Blue Origin, specifically on the Blue Moon Human Landing System, which will help ensure a steady rhythm of astronauts living and working on the Moon before we venture to Mars.
To be clear, the vehicle that these two people are standing in front of will not fly into space, and we still don't know what the final product will look like in the end.
As Ars Technica admits, it's just a model, but compared to the earlier potential version of the lander, and especially compared to the first Blue Moon module design launched in 2019, this white and gold monster leaves much to be desired.
On May 9, 2019, Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, stood in front of the prototype of the "Blue Moon". Image courtesy of Blue Origin.
While these original designs look much sexier on futuristic sites, they clearly don't impress NASA too much.
In 2021, the agency controversially abandoned Blue Origin to award Elon Musk's SpaceX an exclusive contract to build a Human Landing System launch vehicle for an upcoming lunar mission. Unsurprisingly, the fiasco led to some kind of vendetta between the two billionaires.
In addition to being very angry, Bezos also sparked a huge legal battle, but it took NASA more than 18 months to officially grant Blue Origin a consolation contract to provide it with a second HLS rocket in May 2023 — and even the model at the time could be said to be better than what Bezos showed last week.
The "Blue Moon" lander conceived by the artist. Image via Blue Origin/NASA.
We are convinced that building a lunar lander is a lot of work, and in less than 6 months, going from concept art to completing a model is an even greater feat. Not to mention going from a model to a physical object.
Still, Blue Origin won't be able to perfect its Blue Moon lander until at least the end of this decade, which seems like a huge stroke of luck because, judging by the model it showed to NASA last week, it's definitely not ready for space.