JerBill,
What is “the mission of NASA”, in your opinion?
It is pretty well documented that they heyday of NASA funding coincided with U.S. interest in advancing ICBM technology as part of the nuclear arms race. In fact, NASA’s own history site has quotes from President Kennedy and others regarding that point, which I’m too lazy to look up now.
Which is not to say that many NASA employees have not always seen their mission primarily as exploring the boundaries of human travel, colonization, etc. in outer space for lofty humanitarian and scientific reasons.
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.