The reason is that NASA doesn't even have the budget to afford a single winner, and SpaceX agreed to update its payment schedule to make the contract work.
I expect Congress expected them to do the same thing here, but then SpaceX forced the issue by coming in under the skimpy budget Congress gave. This forced NASA's hand, giving them almost no choice but to award the contract to SpaceX.
Congress will be furious, both because they didn't award two contracts and because their golf course buddies didn't get the contract. But NASA played the hand that was dealt.
It’s not nice the military get all the funding for their stupid toys.
NASA also identified significant risk because the LM Orion derived assent module would be far behind in development compared to the rest of the architecture.
The problem BO has is that they don't have the credibility to build a human capsule that can launch from the moon. But working with LM means they are gone do nothing more then the minimum and they want to be paid without risk for them.
> SpaceX beat out Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, which had formed what it called a “national team” by partnering with aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper
> both very highly rated from a technical and management perspective and that also had, by a wide margin, the lowest initially-proposed price.
BO didn't rate as high and was more expensive.
(1) https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-...
I think he would rather spend that money on BO to develop whatever he wants to develop next.
I don't think you want to be a commercial costumer of LM and NG, that doesn't sound fun.