Which is... slightly baffling. Blue Origin doesn't have much of a track record actually getting stuff into orbit, but with Bezos's backing, you'd think the one thing they would have is flexibility on the payment schedule...
> 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
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.
> 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.