"Rocket Man" over at Rockets and Such seems to think that Lockheed Martin scammed NASA on the Orion proposal.

To the extent that LM is adding cost for added features, it's due to changes in NASA's requirements for Orion. The configuration at the moment bears only a superficial resemblance to the configuration that won LM the contract, in large part because of NASA-directed changes.

To retool Rocket Man's car-buying analogy, what NASA said it wanted when it was looking around on the lot was a station wagon (basic transportation). Having signed the contract, they now want the dealership to throw in this add-on and that trim package, in an effort to turn the station wagon into a vehicle with the durability of a Hummer, the flexibility of a Jeep, and the reliability of a Volvo...while simultaneously reducing the curb weight to that of a Yugo so that the underpowered engine can actually get it off the lot.

Which is, of course, no easy task.

The blame here is misplaced. LM is doing what it can to accommodate the requirements changes coming from NASA. But LM is not a charitable organization - it's in business to make a profit, and there's no reason to expect a contractor in any line of business to simply eat the cost of changes requested by their customer, as Rocket Man seems to imply in the case of Orion. To expect otherwise is to invite abuse by the customer, and bankruptcy for the contractor.