Boeing tried to amend bid after guidance from NASA official, raising concerns it received inside inf
Alternate headline: Boeing effort to change moon lander bid prompted probe
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Source: Washington Post
Boeing tried to amend bid after guidance from NASA official, raising concerns it received inside information
The incident has sparked a NASA inspector general investigation and led to Doug Loverro’s resignation
By Christian Davenport
6/20/2020, 12:40:41 p.m.
After a top NASA official improperly contacted a senior Boeing executive about a bid to win a contract potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the company attempted to amend its proposal past the deadline for doing so, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
That raised alarm bells inside the space agency, where officials were concerned that Boeing was attempting to take advantage of inside information. Ultimately, the matter was referred to NASA’s inspector general office, and NASA’s leadership last month forced Doug Loverro to resign from his position as the associate administrator of NASA’s human spaceflight directorate.
Boeing did not win one of the lucrative contracts to build a system capable of landing astronauts on the moon. But the inspector general investigation could be another headache for a company under fire for having an unusually cozy relationship with federal regulators, especially if it identifies wrongdoing on the part of Boeing senior executives. The company already is reeling from two fatal crashes of its 737 Max airplanes that killed a total of 346 people and from the bungled test flight in December of its Starliner space capsule.
A person with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation said: “I can tell you with 100 percent confidence that no laws were broken. What we are talking about are conversations that occurred outside the normal dictated channels but didn’t violate the sanctity of the procurement process.”
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/20/nasa-boeing-bid-probe/
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DU thread from May: Major personnel change at NASA 1 week before human spaceflight resuming from the Cape
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