Is the US Military Spending More on Space Than NASA?

Though military budgets are murky, a whole lot of cash is getting funneled to space from the Defense Department.

“We have liftoff for the NROL-65 of the National Reconnaissance Office!” a voice calls out. Moments later, a gigantic orange rocket rolls out of a hanger decorated with a massive American flag and blasts off. Accompanied by a guitar riff, the rocket sails into the sky.

The video is made by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The rocket roaring into the sky, notwithstanding the less than subtle advertisement, is not on the books, and the budget used to build it is secret. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the owner of the payload, is a classified U.S. intelligence agency dedicated to launching and maintaining government satellites.

But this launch is just a small part of the cloak-and-dagger world of military space. And even though it isn’t as well known as NASA, it’s big business. So much so that NASA officially receives just 59 percent of the U.S. space budget — and it could be far less than that.

Joth Davis is breeding an experimental line of shellfish to feed us when climate change makes that more difficult.

Joth Davis points to a sea lion splashing in Clam Bay. He has emerged from a dock wearing waders on a brisk fall day at a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research center in Manchester, Washington. We’re meeting for what turns into a crash course in shellfish sex 101.

The sprawling facility hosts a number of activities, including the Pacific Hybreed laboratory, a tiny hatchery that Davis, 64, founded with his partners nearly two years ago. Their goal? To develop super shellfish that can withstand disease and climate changes threatening an industry worth some $340 million just in the U.S. — not to mention an important food source. Yes, your fried scallops and oysters on the half shell are in danger.

Davis, who has spent his entire adult life breeding, researching and selling shellfish, is concerned about making the aquaculture industry more sustainable. Considering the environmental impact of growing “high-quality protein” such as pigs and cows on land, he says, humans are going to have to get more adept about using the sea.

No major economy depends on exports as much as Germany does. And the country’s exports are slowing.

Alexander Hinterkopf, a maker of digital industrial printers, built his business through regular trips from the company’s German headquarters to big markets around the world. But in recent months his travels have been less fruitful.

“The environment can be summed up in one word — uncertainty,” says the Baden-Württemberg-based businessman. “Uncertainty is never a good thing in business, it means you always postpone decisions. Since the summer, I’ve been to China three times, and each time customers come up with another reason to postpone.”

After a decade of boom, a darkening political climate is beginning to cloud the international economic outlook. The global economy is forecast to grow less than 3 percent for the first time since 2009 in 2019, according to Consensus Economics, which polls economists worldwide. Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy, with an export machine of 1.6 trillion euros a year, is among those most exposed.

“To invest in a big new machine … businesses need to be able to tell themselves a story about how good the economy is going to be over the next two to three years,” says Hinterkopf. “Instead we have a trade war between the world’s two biggest powers. And Europe has its own problems.”