It’s been a commonplace observation for decades that a principal reason access to space is so horrifically expensive is that the way NASA and other government programs go about it requires a “standing army” of tens of thousands of civil servants and contractor employees who have to be paid regardless of the flight rate. This creates a huge fixed cost component in the operations budget, which cannot be reduced by economising on hardware costs or launching more frequently. Consequently, most “new space” concepts, including my own modest proposal from 1993, have focussed on reducing the size of the standing army to a bare minimum. If a crew of just a few people could launch a liquid-fuelled ICBM in the 1960s, why should it take thousands of people to operate space vehicles today, especially given the progress in computing and automation made in the intervening years?

Well, here’s the answer—because NASA is a jobs program, not a space program! Its purpose is to employ civil servants and industry contractor personnel, carefully spread around congressional districts and pouring taxpayer funds into their economies.

It’s official! NASA is a jobs program. (Fourmilog: None Dare Call It Reason).