Blue Origin protest over $2.9B lunar lander contract slapped down

The U.S. Government Accountability Office on Friday struck down Blue Origin's protests over SpaceX's $2.9 billion lunar lander contract from NASA. Blue Origin, the Kent, Washington-based space company founded by Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, argued that NASA unfairly strayed from its initial plan to award multiple contracts for astronaut landing systems on the moon. A statement from GAO attorney Kenneth Patton laid out why NASA ultimately chose to give Elon Musk's SpaceX the…