Blue Origin Reportedly Lost A Significant Number Of Key Employees

There are significant amounts of money to be made in the commercial spaceflight program with NASA. With significant amounts of money to be made, multiple companies compete to land contracts with NASA for various missions and to place payloads into space. SpaceX seems to be the darling of NASA right now, winning more contracts and handling more missions than other competing companies. Recently, SpaceX was given the contract worth billions of dollars to place a lunar lander on the moon's surface.

One of the main competitors for that contract against SpaceX was Blue Origin. A new report surfaced claiming that Blue Origin has lost over a dozen top engineers and key employees over the summer. Some of those workers departed the company after founder Jeff Bezos used his massive fortune to take a trip into space. The departure of key employees also came weeks after the company lost out to SpaceX for the NASA mission.

The report also indicates that after the massive exodus of key talent, Blue Origin gave its employees $10,000 cash bonuses with no strings attached in an attempt to retain workers. Unfortunately for Blue Origin, some of its key personnel went to competitors, including SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace.

It's worth noting that none of the workers were specific on her reason for why they left the company. However, the report does cite reviews of the company on Glassdoor that point to executive management and slow bureaucracy as reasons for leaving.

The report does say some of the engineers who departed Blue Origin were part of its lunar lander program. Blue Origin did protest SpaceX's winning of the contract. Late last month, the Government Accountability Office gave a clear reason why SpaceX alone was chosen for the lunar lander contract. The GAO pointed to SpaceX being significantly cheaper and having a better record than the other offers. Limited funds were also cited as the main reason only one provider was chosen.