I mean "NASA." "The space program" is geopolitical and teeny-weeny by any real standard. As I recall, the Mars 2020 rover is slated to cost $130 million. An F-35 costs three times that. Rosetta cost a billion euros. A KH-11 Block 4 costs ten billion dollars. The world watches with bated breath as that rover does its thing; I was one of two dozen people who gathered to watch the last KH-11 go up out of Vandenberg.

Note that I didn't say "ruse." Note that I didn't say "cover." I said "beard." NASA does a lot of cool shit and I love all of it. But it does what it does largely as a public, benevolent front for a private, militarized mission by the rest of the space industry. Do I think everyone that works at NASA (and remember - I've known a few) wake up every morning looking forward to a day of subterfuge? No.

But I don't think NASA happens without defense purposes driving all major allocations, either.

Besides which, integrating unmanned systems into NAS has a lot more to do with the CIA.

(ducks)