Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin lost its maximum talent during NASA’s fight against Earth

Jeff Bezos flew into space late last month, but his company has lost the most talent since the space billionaire founder returned to Earth.

At least 11 key leaders and senior engineers have left Blue Origin this summer, CNBC said, and many continued in the weeks following the Bezos space flight.

Two of the engineers, Nitin Arora and Lauren Lyons, have announced jobs this week at other space companies: SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace, by Elon Musk, respectively.

Others have quietly updated their LinkedIn pages over the past few weeks.

People familiar with the matter confirmed to CNBC each departure without notice. These outings include the following people: New Shepard Senior Vice President Steve Bennett, Head of Mission Security Jeff Ashby (who retired), New Glenn Senior Director Bob Ess, New Shepard Senior Chief Financial Officer Glenn, Bill Scammell, senior production testing director Christopher Payne, senior. propulsion design engineer Dave Sanderson, senior HLS human factors engineer Rachel Forman, propulsion engineer Rex Gu and rocket engine development engineer Gerry Hudak.

Those who announced they would leave Blue Origin did not specify why, but frustration with executive management and a slow, bureaucratic structure is often cited in employee reviews at the Glassdoor workplace.

A company spokesman emphasized Blue Origin’s growth in a statement to CNBC.

“Blue Origin grew by 850 people in 2020 and we have grown 650 more by 2021. In fact, we have grown by almost a factor of four in the last three years. We continue to hold important leadership roles in manufacturing, quality, design and engines and vehicle design. It’s a team we’re building and we have great talent, “the spokesman said.

Some of the engineers who left were part of Blue Origin’s astronaut lunar landing program. Bezos’ company lost its bid for a valuable NASA development contract in April when SpaceX was announced as the sole winner of the space agency’s Human Landing System (HLS) program, winning a contract of $ 2.9 billion.

But while last month the Government Accountability Office denied Blue Origin’s protest over NASA’s decision, the company has continued to intensify its fight to be part of the Human Landing System program. The Blue Origin company first launched a public relations offensive against SpaceX’s Starship rocket and then, on Monday, sued NASA in federal court.

The company has about 4,000 employees in the United States, headquartered near Seattle in Kent, Washington, as well as facilities in Cape Canaveral, Florida; Van Horn, Texas; and Huntsville, Alabama.

Shortly after the July 20 Bezos space flight, Blue Origin granted all its employees a full-time cash bonus of $ 10,000, several people familiar with the situation told CNBC. None of the Blue Origin contractors received the bonus, which was paid to employees on July 30th. The company confirmed the bonus, with a spokesman noting that a “thank you” was intended for achieving the goal of throwing people into space.

Internally, two people told CNBC that the bonus was perceived as the leadership of the company trying to attract talent to stay, in response to the number of employees filing notices to leave after launching their first team in the space and return safely.

A look at Glassdoor reveals a sharp disparity in employee satisfaction with Blue Origin’s leadership compared to other top-tier space companies. According to Glassdoor, only 15% of Blue Origin employees approve of CEO Bob Smith, compared to 91% for Elon Musk at SpaceX or 77% for Tory Bruno at United Launch Alliance.

NASA’s Human Landing System program is one of the essential pieces of the agency’s plan to return American astronauts to the surface of the moon, known as Artemis.

Last year, NASA distributed nearly $ 1 billion in concept development contracts for HLS: SpaceX received $ 135 million, Leidos subsidiary Dynetics $ 253 million and Blue Origin $ 579 million of dollars. The space agency then hoped to award two of those three companies with hardware development contracts this year, but after a shortfall in funding for HLS from Congress, NASA decided to award only SpaceX a contract worth about $ 2.9 billion.

Blue Origin and Dynetics quickly filed protests in front of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which stopped NASA work on the program until the protests could be resolved. The GAO on July 30 confirmed NASA’s decision. On August 16, Blue Origin took its battle a step further, suing NASA in the U.S. Federal Claims Court.

NASA has so far paid $ 300 million for its SpaceX contract, with payment made the day GAO denied the protests. However, the space agency’s work on HLS has been halted again – this time due to the Blue Origin lawsuit, according to court statements on Thursday – and will not resume until November 1.

Blue Origin has struggled to achieve multiple major programs since Bezos hired Smith as CEO in 2017. Bezos founded the company in 2000, with the goal of creating “a future where millions of people live and work in space for benefit the Earth. ” Delays, while common in the industry where the saying “Space is hard” is still heard, have pushed back Bezos’ view, highlighted by the departure of Blue Origin’s chief operating officer in late last year.

Bezos launched himself into space as one of the members of the first crew aboard Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard rocket. Although the company has not disclosed prices, New Shepard is competing with Virgin Galactic in the field of suborbital space tourism, with Blue Origin selling tickets worth nearly $ 100 million for future passenger flights. While New Shepard’s first manned launch was a mild success, Blue Origin’s leadership had previously hoped the rocket would begin launching people in late 2017.

Blue Origin’s third major program is its stable rocket engine, driven by the BE-4 engine that will power its New Glenn rocket. The company previously stated that its BE-4 engines would be “ready for flight in 2017.”

However, four years later, development problems and a lack of hardware to test quickly mean that Blue Origin has not yet delivered its first flight engines, ArsTechnica reported earlier this month. The company is pushing to have two BE-4 engines ready by the end of this year. It should be noted that the BE-4 is important beyond Blue Origin, as ULA signed an agreement to use the engines to power its Vulcan rockets, choosing Blue Origin for Aerojet Rocketdyne as the supplier. ULA is pushing for its first Vulcan rocket to be ready for launch later this year and Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines are expected to be one, if not the final piece, added before launch.

Bezos has spent most of his time in the last two decades at Amazon, but along the way he has consistently sold pieces of his stake in the technology giant to fund the development of Blue Origin, worth $ 1 billion. year, or possibly more. Last month, Bezos resigned as CEO of Amazon, and many in the space industry expected him to spend more time focusing on his space company.