They even have minority owned engineering companies in this racket that are owned by Eskimos and by Native American Indians. And it is DoD too, not just NASA that does this.
It's an absolute joke and a waste of time/money.
I've seen the set-asides on the DoD side go to a small business (women, minority, veteran, etc.) only to come back to us because they couldn't make the products the contract they bid on required.
It was an interesting conversation with the Program Manager and contracting office when they told us we only won 80% of the contract, even though we were the only company in the industry that could produce what was needed for the contract.
So the contract office wanted us to be the Prime for 80%, and yet gave away another 20% to the minority-owned business which they wanted to buy from us and then pass it through to the DoD. When I received the quote from this other business, I just "No-quoted" it. That caused a bit of a stir because now there was a contract that couldn't be completed by this other vendor. Luckily, we had a really good Program Manager to work it.