The hammer was "only" $435 and that price is really a reporting artifact. The hammer was part of a larger contract that included spare parts and R&D effort lin

The hammer was "only" $435 and that price is really a reporting artifact. The hammer was part of a larger contract that included spare parts and R&D effort linked to those parts. When the spending was reported, the same absolute amount of R&D ($420) was allocated to every item, inflating the apparent price of a $15 hammer to $435. By the same token, the engineering work on more complicated systems (e.g., an engine) was an absolute steal at $420 and since the total amount of R&D spending was fixed, nobody really got ripped off.