Maria Cantwell Uses Anti-China Plan to Possibly Steer $10 Billion Moon Landing Contract to Bezos-Owned Space Company in Her State

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the powerful chairwoman of the Senate Commerce Committee, plans to attempt to use a bipartisan piece of legislation meant to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s technological advances to instead steer what could end up being a huge boon of a federal contract worth billions of dollars to a company operating in her home state owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Cantwell, the chair of the panel that will consider the supposedly anti-China bill on Wednesday, is proposing amendment language to the plan that would authorize a second contract from NASA for a key part of the Artemis program that aims to put Americans back on the moon soon. NASA, through the Artemis program, awarded a contract last month for what is called a Human Landing System (HLS) to billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, a direct competitor of Bezos’s Blue Origin company.

Both Musk’s and Bezos’s companies competed for the HLS contract in the Artemis program, as did another firm called Dynetics. SpaceX won the deal, NASA announced on April 16, in a hyped-up press release that was headlined: “As Artemis Moves Forward, NASA Picks SpaceX to Land Next Americans on Moon.”

“SpaceX’s HLS Starship, designed to land on the Moon, leans on the company’s tested Raptor engines and flight heritage of the Falcon and Dragon vehicles,” NASA’s press release stated. “Starship includes a spacious cabin and two airlocks for astronaut moonwalks. The Starship architecture is intended to evolve to a fully reusable launch and landing system designed for travel to the Moon, Mars, and other destinations.”

The contract with SpaceX is worth $2.89 billion and is for Musk’s company to develop what is called the Human Landing System to land American astronauts on the moon for the first time in decades. In addition to the press release announcing that SpaceX won the deal, NASA released a video further explaining how Blue Origin and Dynetics had also been competing for the contract but that SpaceX won it in the end:

Having competed for the contract, and lost out, Blue Origin faced a major setback from NASA’s decision. Blue Origin is appealing NASA’s decision to award the deal to SpaceX, CBS News reported shortly after NASA’s announcement. On April 27, CBS revealed that Blue Origin would seek to overturn NASA’s contract to SpaceX.

“Blue Origin announced Monday that it is protesting NASA’s decision earlier this month to award a single $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX for development of a new lunar lander for the agency’s Artemis moon program, rejecting competing proposals from Blue Origin and Dynetics,” CBS News’s William Harwood wrote.

That appeal process is expected to last months and not resolve until later in the summer at the earliest.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/05/11/cantwell-uses-anti-china-plan-moon-landing-contract-space-company-washington/

CNN’s Cooper: Rand Paul Disrespecting ‘Medical Science’ by Confronting Fauci on COVID Origins

During an interview with Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) on Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” host Anderson Cooper reacted to Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) exchange with White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci on the origins of COVID-19 and whether American tax dollars supported research that could have led to the outbreak by stating that one would think Paul, as a doctor, would “have more respect at least for medical science.”

Cooper said, “I mean, he’s an ophthalmologist. You would think that he would be — have more respect at least for medical science. Dr. Fauci, he later told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta that he thinks senators might be playing to the cameras. It certainly — that could certainly be it — the idea that Fauci is somehow a villain to Trump-allied politicians. What does one even say to that idea?”

Cooper later added, “We should also point out, Dr. Fauci, in his exchange with Sen. Paul, did stress that he fully supports further investigation into the origins of COVID-19.” And asked Smith what more she wants to know about what took place in Wuhan.

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/05/11/cnns-cooper-rand-paul-disrespecting-medical-science-by-confronting-fauci-on-covid-origins/