NASA OIG Investigation Into Boeing And Lunar Lander Contracts
NASA investigating former official’s contacts with Boeing on lunar contracts, Fox News
“NASA’s inspector general is investigating an allegation that a high-ranking NASA official earlier this year improperly guided Boeing Co. regarding an agency competition for lucrative lunar-lander contracts, according to people familiar with the details The probe, according to these people, focuses on communications Boeing officials had with the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s human-exploration office, Doug Loverro, before he resigned in May. The inspector general’s staff, these people said, is looking into an allegation that Mr. Loverro improperly provided guidance that could have offered the Chicago aerospace giant unusual insight into aspects of the competition. Boeing ultimately was eliminated in the competition for technical and cost reasons unrelated to the communications with Mr. Loverro, according to these people. The outcome was viewed as a blow for Boeing, long formidable in U.S. space exploration efforts.”
Purely IMO, I’m not buying the ‘no connection to Boeing being frozen out of Artemis’ aspect of this. There may not be a direct connection but I suspect that this investigation led NASA to look at Boeing’s offer a lot more critically.
I’m not convinced. We don’t know when the OIG investigation started, or when anyone else within NASA was really aware of it. The reviews and selections could have finished before the people involved know much of anything about this investigation. Also, the reviews are pretty much confined to specific topics and issues. Other than being about a bit more or less trusting or doubtful about statements in a proposal, there isn’t a whole lot of room for them to consider other things. And, in selection, the weight given to each topic (technical feasibility, cost/budget realism, etc.) is usually specified in advance and changing that would be both difficult and open up the process to complaints by those not selected.
I can’t see an OIG changing the ratings the Boeing proposal got from the reviewers, and those were quite poor. Maybe they did know about the investigation, but what could they do? If Boeing had inside information which caused to include something, or describe it in more detail, the reviewers would still have been required to consider those details. They aren’t allowed to say, “I’m going to ignore paragraph 5 on page 102; I think they only put that in because someone inside NASA told them they should.” I suppose, if someone inside NASA told Boeing they could be a bit vague about something, because the reviewers would trust them, a review who heard about it might say to himself, “To hell with that, I’m not going to trust them, I’m going to go over it with a fine comb.” But that implies the reviewers would have known quite a bit about the details of an OIG investigation which had just started. And I think avoiding even that is one reason why specifics about OIG work isn’t widely circulated, even within NASA, until they have a report ready.
If he shared info from the competing contractors with Boeing, he could be in a lot of trouble.
“If”.
What Mr. Loverro’s mistake may have done is to neutralize the ability of Boeing’s greatest political ally to tilt the scales in any fashion. The money they asked for, and the money that would have been spent in Northern Alabama on the study, are probably not too different. The core of it is that once an *active* investigation was started, even the most powerful pols would not risk getting involved.
Given the consistency of Boeing’s support from the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, an active investigation might be the *only* thing that would successfully waive off a campaign for Boeing from that direction.
I’m turning off comments. I am tired of deleting personal attacks and/or complicated “what if, what about, it might be, I think that, is it possible” – laden scenarios about criminal activity – posted mostly by people hiding behind fake names. None of us – including the author of the piece – were there. Read the article and move on. We’ll all know what did or did not happen when the OIG report comes out.