Going to space is only a secondary goal for SLS though. Keeping a bunch of people in politically influential states and congressional districts employed is the primary goal and it's succeeding at that.
Not quite. Under certain conditions (high marginal propensity to consume, etc.) the "multiplier" can be > 1, and then your stimulus really creates value.
Well, in the literal sense, the government can raise revenue via tax and employ people. So it's literally true... You might not like it, or it might be ill advised, or might believe that all taxation is theft, but it is what it is.
Money represents work, and the government is waisting billions of dollars of highly trained professional work hours on the SLS. This money could have been used in unaccountably more productive enterprises, but the incentive structures and feedback loops are so broken in government, it can't even build a rocket ship, in an era where every two bit backyard company is building their own.
The taxes raised to pay for SLS actually are screwing over the rocket industry because companies actually getting things accomplished have to compete for the highly trained engineers and scientists being wasted on SLS. There's no amount of "trickle down theory" that makes the SLS a net gain for society.
> This money could have been used in unaccountably (sic) more productive enterprises
The space industry is one of the major resource sinks that prevent runaway economic growth that would destroy civilization as we know it: the so-called "economic supernova".
The natural result of scientific progress is a kind of economic singularity beyond which is entirely unknown territory. What happens to our civilization when the primary underpinnings are obviated by technology? No one knows.
So, NASA, FAANG, the Financial Industry, most of the lawyers, accountants, and bureaucrats, etc. are just make-work jobs to occupy productive people to keep them from inadvertently causing the apocalypse.
(FWIW Bucky Fuller calculated that the inflection point to runaway wealth was in the mid-1970's. We're fifty years over due for the end of history.)
While I am horrified by the sums of money, I think there's a slightly less cynical take than the congressional districts one.
If you want to have an industry of people who make X, then there need to be people employed making X, every year, for decades. And at more than one company, so that it isn't too fragile a career path. When X is single-use rockets there is the advantage that after one flight you have to re-build, whereas when X is tanks (or other long-lasting hardware) you have to choose to throw the old ones away.
