How could they not think of this during design? Rocket science, my ass.

Private companies competing for things ends up with stuff like this. Unless NASA or someone designs a spec and contractually enforces everyone to implement it, problems like this can crop up in all kinds of places.

In most fields, even private companies understand the need for industry standards.

Only when it’s their standard most of the time, which is the reason why we have so many standards for so many things that do basically the same thing