>“It’s really atypical for NASA to make these kinds of errors,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. “They’re generally quite good at acquisition, especially its flagship missions like returning America to the surface of the moon. We felt that these errors needed to be addressed and remedied.”
"it's obviously a mistake because they didn't throw money at lockheed, boeing, and us."
Edit: I wonder if this complaint will be used as a way for congresscritters to make NASA change their plans. Can't just call it a jobs program, but if you can allege an error on NASA's part, you've got a lot of cover to put your thumb on the scale.
They can change the budget in the next cycle to specify that NASA must add another contractor as a secondary for risk mitigation reasons. They can haul the administrators in front of committee and throw a bunch of concern around to cow NASA into revisiting its decision.
