Lockheed's NASA Boost

Lockheed Martin emerged yesterday as the winner in the competition for the NASA contract to build Orion, the next-generation spacecraft to send humans to the Moon and beyond. Under the deal, the company will get $3.9 billion through 2013 to design, build and fly the craft. Then it'll get another $3.5 billion to build ships to go to the space station and the moon, and to ferry cargo to the space station. But you should pay little attention to those numbers, the New York Times reports, because NASA projects typically run 50 percent above initial cost estimates.