NASA subcontracted about everything for the space program.
Funnily, even with NASA's example, we have several instances of Boeing screwing up everything in favor of short term gains. ULA had to be 'forced' into existence by the government, because Boeing was caught conducting espionage on Lockheed Martin and was at risk of getting barred from government rocket launches (which would've left the US with only one launch service provider). They also tried to amend their bid on the Artemis lander competition, potentially after having info on others' bids leaked to them by a NASA insider. They forced ULA to severely limit the capabilities of Vulcan to not make SLS unnecessary (even tried to get people fired for it). Then, of course, we have the ongoing engineering disasters of SLS and Starliner.
I'm also not really sure how NASA fits considering that they have no monetary profit motive. They subcontract everything because that's just how the government does most of its procurement.
What is the evidence of that?
Certainly there's every reason to believe that they exceeded requirements by a lot: NASA not only has an astounding successs rate (in the most challenging engineering and manufacturing challenges in human history) but their missions tend to last far longer than the specifications. Voyager 1 and 2 are still flying, and so is that helicopter.
In fact, is there any organization ever that is a worse fit for the description, "did the bare minimum to meet requirements".
For an interesting description of how NASA engineering and budgeting actually work, here's someone from JPL (for a bit more, see other comments from the same user):
* The Space Shuttle - a death trap and reusable in no practical sense. Refurbishment involved near rebuild of large components. Often used as proof about how reusable rockets were not financially viable prior to F9's reliability.
* SLS (ie the rocket to nowhere) - too expensive and too slow to build to be worth using unless literally mandated by law. Is too rough of a ride, Orion's screens had to be modified to flicker in sync with the vibrations so that they would be readable. Congress (in blatant bias towards Boeing) attempted to mandate Europa Clipper to launch on it instead of Falcon Heavy, only backing down when told that they'd have to give Clipper an extra $1B (in addition to the $3B for an SLS launch) to make it able to handle the conditions imposed by SLS. Continues to be a burden on NASA's budget by eating up funding for other projects.
* Vulcan being forcibly neutered down to the bare minimum functionality needed to sell national security launches, because the original proposal would've reduced costs and removed the one existing need for SLS. They were proposing an upgraded second stage which would be able to be refueled in orbit and would've been able to carry Orion. Boeing tried to get the designer of that component fired. Also has the bare minimum to be 'reusable' by having an eventual goal of detaching the first stage engines from the body and splashing them down via inflatable heat shield. Basically does just enough to be a minimum viable competitor to F9 in national security launches and nothing more.
* Starliner with its initially poor software, stuck valves, fire resistance system that actually catches fire and parachute issues. Here Boeing got NASA to pay them extra money on top of the agreed upon fixed-price contract, holding domestic access to the ISS over them. Also tried to get SpaceX's contract cancelled and that money also awarded to themselves for no additional changes. The vehicle is designed for the bare minimum required for the contract (only 2 being built), with no interest in separate commercial activity the way Dragon is used in.
* JWST (ie the telescope that ate astronomy) - massive delays, budget overruns and serious failures in testing which caused another ~5 year delay. It was nicknamed "the telescope that ate astronomy" due to the budget overruns, which harmed several other telescope projects.
* Hubble - the work done directly by NASA was mostly fine, but contractors had large cost and schedule overruns, with the mirror issue due to a failing contractor and Lockmart facing cost overruns + not taking the initiative with designing the spacecraft for the telescope.
There is a heavy Boeing bias here since the main culprit in half of these examples is Boeing. But at the moment these were the main cases that came to mind.
The sad thing about these cases is that the early excuse for not taking risks with new companies like SpaceX was that they didn't have spaceflight "heritage" and couldn't be trusted to not cut corners in important places, with the implication that the established companies would be charging less if they could without compromising safety/quality.
I'll concede on JWST, but with Hubble there was a whole investigation that found the contractor's poor internal management was at fault.
The point is that subcontracting is not the problem.
What problems are you referring to?
But I dont think the comparison makes much sense.