>>14170857I think they threw the fight on purpose. They've got so much on their plate between Starship/SuperHeavy, HLS, and Starlink + Falcon 9, Crew Dragon, CRS, and Falcon Heavy, that taking on another complex endeavor would stretch them too thing. That said, because they're an important partner to NASA and NASA to them, out of respect and tradition, they submitted a half-assed proposal that was guaranteed rejection but honored the spirit of the competition. Because for Mars' ambitions to come true, they're going to have to develop all the capabilities necessary of building a complex space station anyway; but that its easier to just submit an HLS SS variant or HLS SS as a station and get rejected than to offer a proper proposal and on the off-chance win, have SS be subject to even MORE scrutiny and congress type build X by committee thing.
