NASA still foots the bill either way. In this arrangement, the cost of development is simply included in the price of the product plus a fixed profit margin. Such ‘cost-plus’ contracts are criticized because it eliminates competing for efficiency and incentivises contractors to make their solutions as complicated and expensive as possible.

if we take it as true that light speed is the same in every direction

This is the crucial assumption, that to my knowledge hasn’t been proven or disproven. Because the alternative, light goes faster in one particular direction, is also perfectly consistent with everything. And if you’re moving atomic clocks, correcting for time dilations requires you to make assumptions about the one-way speed of light (which we only know from measuring roundtrip times)

That’s just shifting the problem. There is no known way to reliably sync remote clocks except by sending packets and assuming the round-trip time is symmetrical. This is a known problem in physics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-way_speed_of_light

That would be a great follow-up joke.

Now if she chooses the dirty pickup line, you respond with “girl, are you a viking steel crucible? 'Cause I’d put a bone in you.”