The pressure applied by SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics seemed too much to handle for the former aeronautics giant, Boeing.
According to WSJ, a probe has been opened by the federal prosecutors against Jim Chilton, Boeing’s VP, and former head of human exploration programs at NASA, Doug Loverro.
Mr. Loverro wasn't part of the official contracting staff, yet he reached out to Mr. Chilton outside official channels and revealed that Boeing was about to be removed from the competition. Boeing's cost and unspecified details within the technical evaluation seemed to have prompted its elimination from the running for the lunar lander contract.
This conversation seems to have prompted Boeing's team at the time to revise the bid; it was resubmitted just days after the conversation.
NASA had determined that the bid came in too late and removed Boeing from the competition.
During their inception years, commercial space agencies rely on funding like these, and the program's $967 million to be awarded to the three winning teams will go a long way towards achieving NASA's goal to set boots back on the moon by 2024.
It would be foolish to dismiss Boeing VP's alleged wrongdoing as no harm, ergo no foul. Had NASA reconsidered Boeing's bid, even though resubmitted late, it could have easily been one of the winners, effectively robbing another firm of hard-earned funding.
Boeing better have some watercraft designs for withstanding extremely hot waters, because they seem to have just found themselves in a pot of rolling boil soup of great legal proportions.
Article edited by @SmokeyShorts, you can follow him on Twitter
