The chain reaction has finally started…
Just days after news broke of the departure of the lead engineer at Blue Origin, it seems like many are following suit. Nitin Arora, the lead of mission architecture and integration of Blue Origin’s Human Landing System team said farewell to the company on 13th August and joined SpaceX, the company’s space rival. Things have been looking pretty gloomy for Blue Origin’s future as it seems like about a dozen employees have resigned from their posts including engineers and key leaders. The news came after Jeff Bezos flew into space (maybe they all wanted to tag along with him?)
It seems like Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos have been caught up in a mess (that they created themselves) involving SpaceX, NASA and their lunar landing contract for a while now. If you’re not up-to-date with the story, the events go as follows; Blue Origin protested against NASA for only granting SpaceX the lunar contract when initially they had decided to settle for two but their protests were rejected by Government Accountability Office (GAO). Taking things a step further, Blue Origin decided to file a lawsuit against NASA on claims that their evaluation was biased towards SpaceX which resulted in a halt of operations surrounding the HLS. If that wasn’t enough, in the midst of chaos, Blue Origin’s lead engineer decided to quit and join SpaceX which gave a big blow to the company.
All the events till now have led to Blue Origin’s downfall and now the news of about 17 more employees leaving Blue Origin, it seems like it’s getting worse. The attempts by Blue Origin to defame SpaceX with infographics were not approved by many of the employees which could be a strong factor in them leaving the company. Till the beginning of 2020, things were going pretty smoothly with Jeff Bezos’ company, with about 1500 new employees joining the space firm and making the company grow “nearly a factor of four over the past three years.” If Blue Origin doesn’t get its act back together, it could be seeing a more drastic decrease in the number of employees soon.
